Tokyo (Japan) - Fujitsu today said that it has successfully developed carbon-nanotube-based heatsinks for semiconductors such as memory and microprocessors. According to the company, carbon nanotubes can effectively amplify signals and dissipate heat simultaneously.
Carbon nanotubes, pure carbon cylinders often only 2 nm in diameter, keep emerging as one of the most promising scaling technologies across the semiconductor industry. Considered to be a future replacement of today's transistor technology in devices such as memory cells and microprocessors, Fujitsu believes that carbon nanotubes (CNT) also hold the potential to become a new and more efficient resource for building heatsinks. According to the company, CNTs have not only shown unusual strong structures and electrical conductivity, but also thermal characteristics that are superior to the metals used today.
The company said that the challenges for new heatsink technologies have surfaced especially in mobile communications, where an increasing demand for higher power and higher frequencies in amplifiers in mobile phone base stations is apparent. "Because high power transistors, the output source for high-performance amplifiers, generate high levels of heat, heat dissipation is extremely important," Fujitsu stated. "Conventionally, heat was dissipated through the use of what is known as the 'face-up structure', in which a high power transistor chip would be connected directly dice-bonded to the package and the heat would escape through the chip."
