SBIR-STTR Award

Thermal conductivity of carbon fiber support structures that also serve as cooling substrates is of increasing importance for high energy physics detectors. One of the shortcomings of current carbon fiber laminates is that they exhibit excellent thermal conductivity of order several hundred W/(m*K) along the fiber direction, whereas the through plane thermal conductivity perpendicular to the fibers is orders of magnitude lower, and at about 1 W/(m*K) more in the range of thermal insulators. This proposal aims to significantly improve the through plane thermal conductivity, by at least a factor five, changing CFRP from being a thermal insulator to a thermal conductor in the through plane direction. Current detector support structures suffer from insufficient through plane thermal conductivity of carbon fiber laminates, leading to inefficient use of material and inferior thermal performance. High pressure cured carbon fiber laminates, laminates with laser drilled thermal vias, and high temperature post processed carbon fiber laminates developed in this SBIR will increase the thermal performance of carbon fiber laminate support structures. Gruenendahl LLC will investigate methods to for high pressure curing of carbon fiber laminates, study thermal vias in carbon fiber laminates produced by laser drilling, and develop a novel method for high temperature post processing of carbon fiber laminates. From an existing small prototype it is expected that the high pressure curing will improve through plane thermal conductivity by at least a factor of five. Commercial application is anticipated for high performance low weight support and cooling structures. Potential applications are heat shedding structures for satellites, satellite bus systems, and integrated support and cooling structures for mobile equipment in general.