Physical Optics Corporation — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N161-052

Description

To address the Navys need for an advanced heat spreader technology for GaN-based monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs), Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new Integrated Nano-Structured Thermal Adapter (INSTA) technology, which applies a novel nanotechnology-based approach, paired with highly optimized system design and materials selection, to produce a robust composite heat spreader capable of effectively managing heat fluxes in modern GaN HPA packages, reducing the hot spot temperatures in the near-junction areas, and assisting in reducing the thermal resistance of the MMIC-heat sink interfaces. The proposed technology is immediately applicable to current manufacturing flows in fabrication of GaN-on-SiC MMIC modules and offers a robust, non-degrading heat management solution that is insensitive to thermal cycling and guarantees long lifetime for the high-duty cycle, densely packaged transmit-and-receive modules in future radar or Electronic Warfare systems. In Phase I, POC will demonstrate the feasibility of INSTA by manufacturing samples of nano-enhanced heat spreaders and validating the performance by measuring the basic thermal transmission properties (TRL-3/4). In Phase II, POC plans to optimize the manufacturing process and fabricate mock-up MMIC package prototypes to demonstrate the ability to mitigate simulated hot spots in realistic MMIC structures, to propel the design beyond TRL-5.