3M Thermal Pad vs AOK Brand Thermal Pad

3M thermal transfer pads are soft and conformable to provide maximum wet out for effective heat transfer and vibration damping for your most demanding thermal applications, such as LED and consumer electronic device assembly.

3M acrylic thermal gap pads have a unique surface tack that enables pre-positioning in multi-layer lamination applications.

Available in silicone and acrylic formulations, both thermal gap fillers provide excellent handling capabilities and can be die cut to fit most applications.

Thermal Pad Features - HIGH PERFORMANCE AOK^TM THERMAL INTERFACE MATERIALS

Soft with high compressibility to reduce thermal resistance and enhance thermal conductivity Optional thermal conductivities for your cooling applications. Naturally sticky Cost effective solutions with competitive price. Thermally conductive silicone rubber heat transfer pads and gaskets from gap filling compounds.

Thermal Pad Applications

- Between electronic components such as semiconductor, IC, CPU.MOS and heatsink.
- Led Lighting, LCD TV, Telecom device, wireless Hub,NB, PC, power supply etc
- Cooling Module, Thermal Module, in all applications where a metal housing is used as heatsink.

Thermal Interface Materials -Thermal Greases/ Thermal Gap Fillers

Thermal Interface Materials for Power LED heatsink

Thermal Greases is a traditional TIM material:

 Silicone-based paste format with a variety of fillers
 Typically applied in manual application or semi-automated process
 High-volume screen printing applications
• Typically viewed as lowest-cost TIM material of any kind.
• Referred to generally as “thermal paste”, “thermal compound”, “thermal grease”.
• User costing typically does not account for waste, clean-up, labor cost for
Application:
 Low material cost does not accurately describe total applied cost.
 Makes accurate cost comparisons to alternative TIM materials difficult.
 Bond line thickness generally predominates in thermal impedance performance, not filler material conductivity.
 Filler particle size is generally more critical than filler conductivity.
 High thermal conductivity fillers may result in higher thermal impedance, not lower.
 Development of a material with greatest ease of application may outweigh thermal impedance performance as the primary development target for many TIM2 applications.

Thermal Gap Fillers General statements: 

 Purpose of these materials is to fill a large air gap between a heat source and a convenient metal surface
 Relative high thickness precludes high performance relative to phase-change, thermal greases, LMAs, PSHs:
• Many materials available with modest thermal performance.
• Compressibility is an important determinant in material selection for a given
application
• Surfaces of gap-fillers may be tacky, to reduce interfacial resistance.
• Protection of surfaces with release liners prior to application is important to prevent dust, particulate accumulation.
• Application requirements are specific to individual material types.
• Very common for power LED applications:
 Luminaire lighting fixtures: heat transfer from LED baseplate to luminaire “can” for heat transfer to ambient air
 Very commonly used as TIM2 for projector light sources and other power LED
applications.

Compressibility is a key characteristic of Thermal gap-filler:

 Ability to deflect at low pressures
 Minimum pressure is important
 Relative high thermal conductivity is important because of the relatively thick nature
of a gap-filler
 Young’s Modulus of material is strongly affected by use of a high percentage of the high
thermal conductivity filler constituent.