Interesting new thermal paste idea
 

http://www.zzz.com.ru/art174.html

Looks to be interesting, I can't wait for someone independant to get their hands on a bit and play with it.

Sexy. I like it. Where do my test subjects sign up?

Take out a little from the toner cartridge on the copier from work

Sells for a dollar a pound

I'm gonna test it tomorrow, Mix some up with a little CoolingFlow Paste and see if I get an improvement


http://www.emsl.com/carbon_black.html

Well... How did it turn out?

LOL, have a look here... ;)

One of the big issues that I have with that study is that the original researcher "claims" that the diamond particles they used cannot be smaller than 25 microns, which is NOT true. It may have been that they could not grind the diamond particles smaller than 25 microns, but you can get diamond powder in any size you want. I regularly use 0.10, 0.25, 1, 3, 6, 9, and 15 micron diamond polishing mixtures. I am not knocking the carbon black properties, they do sound very good, and should indeed work, but diamond in some size range "could" possibly give better results. Diamond powders are really not that expensive in these smaller size ranges either.

Like I said, I am not disputing the carbon black properties, I just think there is some slightly misleading information given and the study could have been more extensive. 25 micron diamond particles are indeed quite large for use in this application, so one has to wonder if the researcher was trying to skew the results.

The carbon black softness and conformability properties are very nice, whereas diamond particles could/will embed and press into the surfaces giving a good thermal interface as well (at the expense of some slight surface damage.)

The performance vs. force applied though is nice to see and of course has to occur. There was a thread here recently where some people didn't think that the force applied made much difference.

You know how these studies go N8; they probably were trying to get a paper published before someone else scooped them on it. I have projects that are pretty uncommon and those get exhaustive treatments. I have projects I know others are working on too and those get fast tracked so I don't end up being unable to publish it. There's always about 10 more experiments you can think of to do...

aBo Well... How did it turn out?

first 5 or 6 trys came out worse by 2 - 4 C Mixing and quanities used seem real sensitive it and had a tendancy to coagulate on me.

Last couple of tests I was able to get slightly better than the baseline paste but within test error so I will not declare a success at about a 1/4 deg. C.

warming the paste to about 80C improved the mixing dispersion of it.

I think it may show promise as my tests were pretty quick and dirty and not representative of may be realized with a more diciplined effort.



As the Paste I used is one of the better ones the and fact that at a minimum it did not degrade performance makes me somewhat positive. I am not sure I want to do a full program on it but I am thinking maybe one of the phase change TIM's might be a better base carrier with better wetting characteristics.