Thermal management of a micro-display engine assembly

This paper presents the results of a thermal solution for a tiled Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) based micro display system. The system consisted of three silicon devices that were precision cut and tiled to form a single seamless to the edge display unit. The maximum allowable displacement between the edges of the silicon tiles and relative displacements between the tiles has to be tightly controlled to meet the system performance requirements. These requirements on displacement necessitated that the temperature gradients during the worst case operating conditions be well understood and quantified. The system design was selected such that the relative displacement between the tiles is kept to a minimum. A plate-finned heat sink in impingement mode (fan-sink) was selected, and tested experimentally. High thermal performance phase change material and thermal grease were selected and tested experimentally as thermal interface materials. Uncertainty analysis was carried out for each experiment. Analytical and numerical analyses were carried out as part of the material selection and optimization process for the parametric study of the micro-display engine assembly.