Lockheed Martin Corporation

Lockheed Missiles & Space Company, Inc.

Ike C Hsu

Alfred A Zinn

Jyotsna Iyer

Justin Samuel Golightly

Jay H Ambrose

Heat spreaders can help promote heat distribution at the surface of a heat sink. However, overly isotropic or anisotropic heat conduction through heat spreaders can limit their effectiveness. Heat spreaders providing for lateral distribution of heat can include a tapered structure containing a metal-diamond composite. The metal-diamond composite includes a continuous metallic phase and a plurality of micron-scale diamond particles located in spaced apart regions of the continuous metallic phase. An interlayer containing the continuous metallic phase but lacking micron-scale diamond particles is disposed between each of the spaced apart regions, and the metal-diamond composite increases in lateral size in a direction of increased tapering. Heat spreaders can be formed by disposing a first mixture containing micron-scale diamond particles and metal nanoparticles in first regions that are vertically spaced apart from each other, and at least partially fusing the metal nanoparticles to form a tapered structure.

Heat spreaders fabricated from metal nanoparticles

A battery safety mechanism can provide a fast-action thermal mechanism to protect and/or electrically isolate a cell of a battery and thereby allow the cell to cool and preserve or elongate life of the battery. The mechanism can use a phase-change material (PCM) reservoir that can be selectively melted to permit actuation of a spring-loaded metal shunt. When actuated, the metal shunt can be placed into contact with terminals of the cell, thereby allowing the cell to be bypassed and be disabled. Thus, the device can electrically isolate the cell from the rest of the battery.

Reversible thermal release mechanism for a battery

A stacked multistage Joule-Thomson (J-T) cryostat is described in which each stage comprises a thermally conducting material plate member with fluid passages formed therein and in which the stages are stacked one above the other but separated from each other by thermally insulating standoff supports. Each successive stage in the stack is cooled to successively lower temperature zones by J-T expansion and liquefaction of different coolant gases. Each stage has a restricting passageway connected to a different high pressure gas coolant supply and forming a throttle valve opening into two-phase (liquid-vapor) coolant reservoir passages. The reservoir passages in all but the coldest stage are in heat exchange relation with the high pressure supply passages of the lower boiling temperature coolant gases. The coldest stage is in heat exchange relation with a cold surface on which a device to be cooled can be mounted. Because the stages are constructed of thermally conductive material, there is substantially no thermal gradient within a given stage, and because the stages are thermally isolated from each other, substantial parasitic loads by the heat exchanger section on the cold reservoir for a given coolant is avoided.

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Los Altos, CA, United States of America

Ike C Hsu