Conformable Thermal Ground Plane

Miniaturized smart munitions are seeing increasing use across all branches of the Department of Defense (DoD) in order to meet the ever evolving mission needs for the U.S. warfighter. These smart micromuntions have been enabled by advances in capabilities and miniaturization of critical microelectonic and microelectromechanical systems such as sensor, navigational, communications, and triggering subsystems. Their small size and stringent packaging requirements in an often complex and crowded munitions platform leaves little space for active cooling for required levels of thermal management. As a result, the DoD has considerable interest in the development of advanced thermal management technologies and materials that can better accommodate the thermal budget of existing munitions platforms without the need to redesign the systems. The development of such a technology will provide needed heat transfer margins for electronic devices, reduce the size and mass of the thermal management system and increase munition payload capacity thereby increasing overall system performance and effectiveness. To address this need, i2C Solutions proposes the development of a highly novel thermal ground plane technology that provides considerable thermal conductivity, EMI protection and in a highly ruggedized package.