Welcome to a new voltlog, today we’re gonna be testing and comparing thermally conductive double sided tape to other solutions like thermally conductive adhesive, silicone pads, or even regular double sided tape to see how effective these solutions are for transferring heat between an IC and the heatsink.
To produce the heat I’m gonna use a small analog electronic load circuit, which will be set for a certain current let’s say 200mA and in theory should produce the same amount of heat for each run. Then we’re going to insert the different type of materials between the heatsink and the IC and we’re gonna measure the temperature of the IC and the temperature of the heatsink. As you can see I have a thermocouple glued to one side of the heatsink with thermally conductive adhesive and another thermocouple glued to this TO247 style transistor that’s producing the heat.
I don’t have a particularly good way of testing this but my plan is to heat the transistor to a stable temperature while the heatsink is kept at room temperature. Then I’m gonna connect the two bodies and measure the time it takes for the heatsink to reach the same temperature or a certain value, close enough. Then repeat the test with a different material and compare the values. If that time span is shorter or longer will depend on the thermal resistance between the body of the transistor and the heatsink and that is highly dependent on the material used between them.