Investigation of Thermal Management Materials for Automotive Electronic Control Units

Sabuj Mallik (1) , Ndy Ekere (1) , Chris Best (1) , Raj Bhatti (1)

1 Electronics Manufacturing Engineering Research Group, School of Engineering

Today's electronics packages are smaller and more powerful than ever before. This leads to ever increasing thermal challenges for the systems designer. The automotive electronic control unit (ECU) package faces the same challenge of thermal management as the industry in general. This is coupled with the latest European Union legislation (Euro 6 standard) which forced the ECU manufacturers to completely re-design their ECU platform with improved hardware and software capability. This will result in increased power densities and therefore, the ability to dissipate heat will be a key factor. A higher thermal conductivity (TC) material for the ECU housing (than the currently used Aluminium) could improve heat dissipation from the ECU. This paper critically reviews the state-of-the-art in thermal management materials which may be applicable to an automotive ECU. This review shows that of the different materials currently available, the Al/SiC composites in particular have very good potential for automotive ECU application. In terms of metal composites processing, the liquid metal infiltration process is recommended as it has a lower processing cost and it also has the ability to produce near net-shape materials.

Mots clés: Electronic Control Unit; Thermal Management; Metal Matrix Composites; Thermal Conductive Polymer; Thermal Interface Material

Domaines: Thermique [physics.class-ph]; Thermique [physics.class-ph]

Sabuj Mallik, Ndy Ekere, Chris Best, Raj Bhatti. Investigation of Thermal Management Materials for Automotive Electronic Control Units. Applied Thermal Engineering, 2010, 31 (2-3), pp.355. ⟨10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2010.09.023⟩. ⟨hal-00692336⟩