Vette Announces Liquid Cooling For IGBT Power Semiconductor Devices
Vette Corp. announced its Aluma-Cop liquid cooling for insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBT). Vette’s liquid cooling flat tube design is said to enable a smaller and lighter solution to cooling IGBT power semiconductors across demanding applications.
IGBTs are high efficiency and fast switching power semiconductor devices and cooling them to insure their reliability is critical for electric vehicles and hybrid cars, where IGBTs control the ac motors and generators connected to the car’s batteries. IGBT power semiconductor applications also include power supplies and uninterruptible power supplies, variable speed refrigerators, air-conditioners, and digital amplifiers in high-end consumer audio systems.
According to Vette Corp North American Power Division President Chris Cutaia, "What makes Aluma-Cop liquid cooling unique is how we designed the tube. The flat tube forms a larger, wide ’’cold’ surface area against the devices or modules that require cooling. It has a cross-sectional aspect ratio of greater than four to one with internal integral forged fins creating a flow channel optimized for both fin pitch and fin height to width ratios. This achieves much greater cooling performance than typical designs that simply press a smooth bore round copper tube into an aluminum carrier block,"
It is claimed that the Aluma-Cop cooling solutions can provide cooling to an IGBT power semiconductor device without an aluminum carrier block. In addition to weight and size reductions, this enables the end user to position the IGBT semiconductor modules by simply loosening clamps and sliding the modules into their desired position at any time during the product assembly sequence. Vette designed Aluma-Cop tubes to connect together via manifolds to support all sizes of IGBT power semiconductor applications.
