Keeping the temperature within the optimal range is critical for many microscale devices during normal operation, such as micro power generators and chip-scale atomic clocks. It can be very challenging when the environmental temperature changes dramatically. Therefore, thermal switches have been proposed to provide programmable thermal resistance. However, the existing technologies usually consume significant power to reconfigure the thermal conductance with active actuators.In order to simplify the device and eliminate the parasitic power loss, we propose a self-adaptive thermal switch array (TSA) which can automatically change its thermal conductance according to environmental temperature without consuming electricity on actuation and control circuit. In this presentation, we will demonstrate the proof of concept of this novel thermal management approach, while discussing various issues involved in the design, characterization and analysis of the thermal switch array.

Design, characterization and analysis of a self-adaptive thermal switch array

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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