SBIR-STTR Award

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to develop thermally conductive 3D printing materials for cooling of high-performance electronic devices. As electronic devices become more compact and energy-dense, there is a growing challenge of overheating, resulting in poor performance and device failure. This problem is particularly relevant to transportation and energy-related technologies increasingly reliant on high-performance electronic components, such as electric motors, battery packs, power electronics, and high-performance processors. This project will develop a new additive manufacturing composite material with thermal conductivity 1000x higher than standard plastics, enabling lightweight, corrosion-resistant, and high-performance heat transfer technologies. Moreover, the materials enable 3D printing on low-cost desktop Fused Deposition Modeling printers without significant hardware modifications, drastically reducing the complexity and cost of printing high performance components. By creating a transformational material for use on a broadly accepted additive manufacturing technology platforms, this project will help create a new market for advanced heat transfer technologies that can significantly increase the performance of electronic devices.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will result in the development of plastic composite materials with higher effective thermal conductivity than aluminum and the ability to be printed on low cost 3D printers. Thermally conductive plastic composites are traditionally composed of base polymer and a high content of thermally conductive filler particles, resulting in poor mechanical properties, high viscosity, high cost and processing difficulties (including inability to 3D print reliably), and a maximum thermal conductivity of ~30 W/m-K (nearly an order of magnitude lower than aluminum). Metals conduct heat well, but are heavy, expensive to manufacture into complex shapes, and can be susceptible to corrosion and fouling when interacting with fluids. This project is proposing a new composite system consisting of a core-shell structure with a core of continuous high thermal conductivity continuous fiber and a shell of a composite thermally conductive matrix. Utilizing 3D printing, this material can be printed into complex shapes to produce new heat transfer parts such as heat sinks, heat exchangers, liquid coldplates and other technologies with thermal performance exceeding metals.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to enable advanced 3D printing materials to solve challenges in emerging electronic devices, transportation technologies, heating and cooling system for buildings, and in thermal management in manufacturing processes. Overheating is a major challenge as electrical devices continue to grow more compact and energy dense. Heat exchangers manufactured through traditional methods are often expensive and energy intensive to fabricate and suffer from corrosion, limited performance, and high maintenance costs. Traditional mold tools machined from metals are often expensive, require long lead times, and have limited design freedom. To address these challenges, this project will develop a platform of novel high thermal conductivity composite materials that can be used to 3D print parts that enhance electronics cooling and performance while also reducing the product weight and cost, can improve heat exchanger performance while also reducing corrosion, fouling and associated maintenance, and can also be used to 3D print low cost and high-performance molds with low-cost capital and short lead times. The project will result in an advanced materials platform for engineers to create parts with metal-like thermal conductivity, but with the speed, low cost, and ultimate design freedom of printing plastics. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will develops 3D printable, plastic composite materials with 500x higher thermal conductivity than standard plastics. The unique materials incorporate continuous wires and fibers in 3D printing filaments to achieve thermal conductivity values not possible in traditionally manufactured composite parts. The polymer composite shell and wire/fiber core can be tailored to offer high strength, high temperature stability, and even joule heating. These materials are printed directly on commercially available and low-cost Independent Dual Extrusion (IDEX) 3D printers using a modified hardware and software platform. Printing and filament production will be accomplished through the following five objectives: 1) finalize filament formulations for the desired material properties, 2) establish a pilot scale filament manufacturing line to demonstrate production scalability, 3) complete minor 3D printer hardware modifications to accommodate filament printing, 4) develop software to print and optimize parts for desired properties, and 5) print application examples and validate product performance with commercially relevant demonstrations. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.