An innovative thermal system approach significantly increases system reliability and power and packaging densities

An innovative self-contained active cooling system for electronic products, which increases power and packaging densities and improves reliability, was investigated. The cooling technology uses low cost, readily available, and reliable components. While this thermal control method can be applied to many applications, a simple power system cooling application is demonstrated. The application demonstrates increased power density of a common 48 Vdc to 5 Vdc high density DC-DC power converter module having standard dimensions of 2.4"×4.6"×0.5". An increase in power density from 50 W/in ³ to over 80 W/in³ was realized. In addition, significantly higher calculated MTBF, from 300 K hours to greater than 3 M hours, was realized with low temperature operation