Thursday, September 21, 2006

US Patent 7109581 - Self-Assembled Nanostructures For Heat Sink

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7109581.pdf

Due to a large surface-to-volume ratio nanostructures make fairly good heat dissipating materials. This is the second US patent in recent weeks to issue a patent for nanostructures used in this fashion. The first was US 7086451 (from a different company) which was published first but has a later priority date. Claim 1 of this patent reads:

1. A micro-cooler device structure comprising: a heat sink body having a heat sink surface; a plurality of individually separated, rod like nano-structures for transferring thermal energy from a surface of at least one integrated circuit chip to said heat sink surface, said plurality of individually separated, rod-like nano-structures being disposed between said heat sink surface and said surface of at least one integrated circuit chip; and, a thermally conductive metallic material disposed within interstitial voids between said plurality of individually separated, rod-like nano-structures.