It was announced in October 2016 that Thermacore had been acquired by Aavid Thermalloy. Fully involved in SBIR from the earliest days of the program with important expertise in thermal management, in 2001 Thermacore had been acquired by Modine Manufacturing. In May 2008, almost in its entirety, the firm was back in the SBIR fold when some of the original management bought back much of the original IP. The basic technology of Thermacore involves a device called a heat pipe, a sealed vessel that transfers heat through the evaporation and condensation of a working fluid. A heat pipe can have an effective thermal conductivity tens to hundreds of times that of copper. These devices are totally passive (no moving parts) making them very reliable and desirable for many electronics cooling applications. Heat pipes can be made using many combinations of vessel materials and working fluids ranging from nitrogen/steel for cryogenic temperatures (minus 150°C) to tungsten/silver for very high temperatures (2000°C). However, for electronics cooling applications, most heat pipes are copper vessels with water as the working fluid. Now with facilities also in Europe to serve its worldwide markets, the company's products are used in a very wide range of applications and industry segments to include electronics cooling, enclosure cooling, fuel cell, high-temperature heat pipe, LED, low-temperature, mold cooling, power electronics cooling, radar electronic, radio base station cooling, satellite thermal control, solar, thermal storage, and waste heat recovery applications. The firm serves military, aerospace/avionics, computer and data center, communications, renewable energy and energy conversion, medical, transportation, test equipment, chemical processing, consumer electronic, government/education, injection molding, automotive, and power electronic markets worldwide. The Technology Center research has led to important and innovative advances in the performance of heat pipes in practical applications. Over the past decade, its personnel have had the highest patent rate in the USA for thermal solutions.
