Thermal Management of Electronic Systems

The Eurotherm Committee has chosen Thermal Management of Electronic Systems as the subject of its 29th Seminar, at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, 14-16 June 1993. This volume constitutes the proceedings of the Seminar. Thermal Management is but one of the several critical topics in the design of electronic systems. However, as a result of the combined effects of increasing heat fluxes, miniaturisation and the striving for zero defects, preferably in less time and at a lower cost than before, thermal management has become an increasingly tough challenge. Therefore, it is being increasingly recognised that cooling requirements could eventually hamper the technical progress in miniaturisation. It might be argued that we are on the verge of a revolution in thermal management techniques. Previously, a packaging engineer had no way of predicting the tempera- tures of critical electronic parts with the required accuracy. He or she- had to rely on full-scale experiments, doubtful design rules, or worst-case estimates. This situation is going to be changed in the foreseeable future. User-friendly software tools, the acquisition and integrity of input and output data, the badly needed training mea- sures, the introduction into a concurrent engineering environment: all these items will exert a heavy toll on the flexibility of the electronics industries. Fortunately, this situation is being realised at the appropriate management levels, and the interest in this seminar and the pre-conference tutorials testifies to this assertion.