Thermal conductivity of solder

After reading this

I am curious if there is higher heat conductivity solder out there, has anyone ever thought to test different formulations, is method of application a determinant of heat transfer?

The thinner, the better heat transfer. And there are better conductors out there than silver. For example liquid metal pads which are sometimes used on CPUs. Those are around 80W/mK while solder is about 40W/mK. Still an order of magnitude better than the dielectric on regular stars or any thermal glue/paste. Those range from <1W/mK (Fujik) and range to (I think) 8W/mK on some Arctic products.

saabluster over at CPF is using some exotic and extremely good glue: http://www.icproto.com/typeroom/assets/uploads/pdf/DIEMAT%20DM6030.pdf

60W/mK, that should be better than solder but worse than liquid metal. For him its better to glue the stuff because he sands the emitter base down.. seems to work great, because the emitter consists of some kind of ceramic with poor thermal conductivity.

I'm still waiting for a flashlight with heatpipes.

100% Sn (Tin) solder has, if I remember, about twice the thermal conductivity as 63Sn37Pb (Standard eutectic tin/lead). It’s a bit of a bitch to work with though…

PPtk

Edit:
Originally typed Sn/Ag - completely wrong on that account. Also wrong on the difference… Just wrong, wrong and more wrong tonight :slight_smile:
Correct Info is:
Not quite twice… 73W/M*K compared to 50W/M*K

Here’s a nice char done by Indium showing the thermal conductivity of many of their alloys. Note that it’s in W/CM*K, so multiply by 100 to get W/M*K
http://documents.indium.com/qdynamo/download.php?docid=453

According to this:

http://www.electronics-cooling.com/2006/08/thermal-conductivity-of-solders/

Its 78 vs. 50.. not twice, but a lot more. Why is it hard to work with? Because of the high melting temperature or is there more to it?

I was wrong about SnAg - It’s actually far worse. I trust Indium FAR more than I true electronics-cooling.com

Sn or SnAg is a pain to work with because of the high melting point and because it doesn’t wet the same as Tin/Lead

New Copper Solder Has 10x Electrical and Thermal Conductivity

:slight_smile:

Nice document PPTK, thanks. Pure gold would be great..

What is #4 in that list? 86W/mK is also nice. I've got some tin rods meant to make tin soldiers.. if those are pure, I could use them. But it does need a lot of heat until it melts. I think I'll stick to regular solder, I'll just keep improving the PCBs. ;)

  1. is 100% Indium. It’s a rare metal, and it’s not cheap.

That is where I got the figures in my post linked to above… there are quite a few better then 50W/m.k however they also have higher melting points and I am not sure how good it is for the LED to be pushed up to >220°C or so even if only for a short period.

That copper solder does look promising, I don’t actually have a clue about the type of solder I use… apart from that it melts at around 160°C, I’m going to have to find myself some 63/37 stuff.

My guess is that with good thermal conduction away from the LED it will be the LED itself which becomes the limiting link / bottleneck.

Yes. Once you solder the LED directly to copper, the bottleneck is the ceramic under the die. Thats why saabluster grinds it off. But honestly.. once the dielectric is eliminated, you are already on a really good way. Its like with anything.. the last few % of performance require the most effort. So lets keep it simple.. ;)

simple is good, but if its not too much harder to get better then thats also very nice

Taking an LED above 220C for a few seconds to solder it is nothing to worry about. Modern LEDs are designed to be reflow soldered using lead-free solder. A typical lead-free solder profile will take the boards as high as 240C-260C for 30 seconds.

PPtk

What about the copper bearing solder paste and silver bearing solder paste, or the stuff jewlers use, like the copper wire solder? Never mind, way too hot.

Just asking, I don't know sh** from shinola when you get technical on me...

Thats the problem: grinding off the bottom of LEDs is far from being easy, and the stuff he uses to glue them down costs a fortune.

You can of course use better solder, but regular solder is at 50W/mK while the better stuff gets to 73W/mK.. and the latter is hard to work with, according to PPTK. I wouldnt (and I dont) mind, a few days ago everybody still used PCBs with dielectric and was really happy..

yes, but to push the envelope and be extra happy with our accomplishment of what was not thought possible yesterday we have to be open minded
however i am also practical, i wouldn’t spend $100 on a better conduction XM-L2 to sinkpad, but i would spend $10 more

Thats exactly what I was talking about. :P

Another cheap but imo hard to accomplish approach would be a metal heat pad and then somehow apply permanent pressure on the LED.. that stuff can do 82W/mK. I think the stuff saabluster uses costs 300$ for the MOQ..

Indium didnt let me go.

I found it for about 1.25€/g which seems fair. 99.9% pure, melting at 175°C, thermal conductivity of 86W/mK, better than solder. It seems you can solder it to aluminium and even ceramics. That means I could grind off the bottom of LEDs and solder them with indium?

If one could manage to solder directly to aluminium, would that be better than copper?

Just guessing but I think the first contact should be copper to funnel the heat away quickly to the radiant surface which could be aluminum to reduce weight. I think a copper star on aluminum sink would be better than an aluminum star on a copper sink.

That is very reasonable pricing for pure indium.

Yes, you technically can solder indium directly to ceramic… even glass…

Soldering to aluminum isn’t really that difficult. The problem is that the flux you have to use to cut through the aluminum oxide layer is nasty stuff (acid), and electronics do not get along well with it.

PPtk

Does technically also mean that I can do it in home application or are there some issues like with aluminium?

I've read that it works to put some oil or flux on aluminium, sand the layer off and then solder to it? If it really is that easy, wouldnt that be a simple way to make really good LED PCBs?