Cambridge Nanotherm expands manufacturing capability to enable a new generation of high power LED designs

Thermal management specialist Cambridge Nanotherm announced that it has built significant additional capability and capacity into its MCPCB manufacturing base to meet rising demand for its award winning thermal management solutions. The company has established partnerships with a wide network of PCB and thin-film manufacturers to offer a broad range of options in terms of circuitisation, quality, volume and standards.

Cambridge Nanotherm’s manufacturing capabilities include everything from fast turnaround prototyping, high-definition thin-film circuitisation, speciality manufacturing, through to high-volume mass production. Key industry and regulatory standards such as automotive standard ISO/TS 16949:2009, as well as industry-specific SGS standards, can be applied.

From LED chip packaging to high-brightness modules, thermal management is becoming a limiting factor as customers demand ever brighter LED devices in ever smaller footprints. To meet these requirements LED manufactures are being pushed into using more thermally effective substrates to ensure that LEDs stay cool enough to meet their advertised lifespan. Historically that meant switching from cost effective MCPCBs to expensive and difficult-to-work-with ceramics such as alumina and aluminium nitride. Cambridge Nanotherm offers an alternative.

Sitting at the heart of high-power LED applications, Nanotherm LC and Nanotherm DM technologies are enabling a new generation of products that rely on effective thermal management to operate successfully. Cambridge Nanotherm’s proprietary LC and DM technologies are available exclusively via this manufacturing process.

Andy Matthews, COO at Cambridge Nanotherm, said: “Cambridge Nanotherm’s MCPCBs offer designers a distinct thermal advantage. Demand for our solutions has therefore been strong, and we’re currently engaged with most of the top ten LED manufacturers. As a result we’ve expanded our manufacturing routes to cater to a much broader variety of requirements. We’re working with some of the best PCB and thin-film circuitisation companies so we can offer an exceptional range of options to ensure we keep our customers satisfied. We will continue to develop our manufacturing capabilities to make sure we always offer the best available options to our customers.”

Nanotherm’s patented ECO process involves converting the surface of the aluminium core of the MCPCB, which acts as a heat spreader, into an electrically insulating but thermally conductive Nanoceramic that offers outstanding thermal performance. Depending on the circuitisation route that is chosen, composite thermal performance of the resulting Nanotherm MCPBC ranges from 115 W/mK to 152 W/mK.

Standard LC products are covered by UL recognition, speeding up time to market for luminaires and modules. Nanotherm manages the entire process, from thermal design guidance and material choice to delivering the finished circuits. This makes the process seamless and simplifies the manufacturing route for customers.