Alun Morgan on Thermal Management and LEDs in Automotive

Estimated reading time: 18 minutes

Morgan: We met them at AltiumLive and I was fascinated when I talked to them. It was good to meet them here as well.

Warner: That’s great!

Morgan: They have devices generating small amounts of heat but for a long time—the life of the vehicle. If the heat is concentrated in one place, then there is a potential risk over time of degradation of the plastic surround, discoloration, or other cosmetic things. We’ve talked to companies like that about using thermal-dissipating materials to bolt on the back and spread the heat out to act as a spreader and take away the hot spots.

Again, that was another application area we hadn’t thought about. But when you have a solution, it’s a bit like the laser. When lasers were invented, they were a solution looking for a problem. Now, they’re ubiquitous; they’re everywhere. And I must admit, I thought that LED lighting substrates to manage the heat would be something you’d do a little bit; you’d replace all the lights, and then it would be done because they last forever, so there would be a limited business opportunity. But that’s not true at all. There are new applications coming all the time. And I think the move toward automotive was a massive change because we’re talking about dozens of LEDs in vehicles. Vehicles are being produced at the rate of 70–80 million per year, and life cycles of vehicles are becoming shorter for vehicles as well, so there’s a massive market there for this.

And when I think about the possibility of going not only for the LED but also for the other 20 areas where thermal management is needed in the vehicle, there’s a whole massive area of growth. The positioning and agility of Ventec has been very good in this area because it was possible to create a new solution fairly quickly. We had the requirement, we knew we had to do something different, and it was possible to build it. Now, the product data sheets and product offerings can be expanded to customizable solutions for individual users that will then be used across the supply base.

Warner: It sounds like a wonderful opportunity.

Morgan: Yes, I’m excited about it. I spend most of my time in low-loss and high thermal reliability solutions, which means thermal endurance. But now thermal management is another area to think about.

Warner: Which is why we love this industry—we never stand still, do we? And you have to do very rigorous testing, so do you do that in one or multiple locations?

Morgan: It’s normally the T1 suppliers. They have their own approved laboratories. We share in the cost of doing the testing, but most people need to do their own testing to be sure. Some test labs, such as Bob Neves from Microtek who was at the seminar, are very familiar with this. Bob is an approver for many of these T1 suppliers, and they would go to him trusting his methods and techniques. We do internal testing, but that wouldn’t be enough to qualify the product. It needs to be done in an external lab either in their own laboratories or at a third party, such as Microtek, for example.

Warner: Well, this has been a fantastic conversation. I’m excited to see where you go from here. Good luck!

Morgan: Thank you, Judy.

Warner: It was great to talk to you, Alun.

Visit www.I-007eBooks.com to download The Printed Circuit Designer's Guide to… Thermal Management with Insulated Metal Substrates written by Didier Mauve and Ian Mayoh from Ventec International Group as well as other free, educational titles.

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