Ceramic sprinter for high-tech solutions

The ther­mo­dy­nam­ics spe­cial­ist hotset is ex­pand­ing its range of heat­ing el­e­ments with the new Hi-Wat­ty Light alu­minum ni­tride heater, an ex­cep­tion­al­ly pow­er­ful pre­mi­um prod­uct. De­signed for high-speed heat­ing and cool­ing of gas­es and liq­uids, this com­pact ce­ram­ic heater is the per­fect so­lu­tion for so­phis­ti­cat­ed high-tech ap­pli­ca­tions in semi­con­duc­tor and med­ical tech­nol­o­gy, as well as in the au­to­mo­tive and aero­space industries.

The ef­fi­cien­cy of many flu­id tech­nol­o­gy process­es and de­vices is pre­dom­i­nant­ly based on the fact that the gas­es or liq­uids car­ried in pipes and con­tain­ers can be heat­ed up and cooled down very quick­ly. By in­clud­ing the alu­minum ni­tride heater Hi-Wat­ty Light in its com­po­nent port­fo­lio, hotset now of­fers a top-class heat­ing el­e­ment for this task, which both en­ables ul­tra-fast heat­ing process­es and en­sures a very ho­mo­ge­neous heat dis­tri­b­u­tion. As such, prod­uct de­vel­op­ers and tech­ni­cal buy­ers in the semi­con­duc­tor, med­ical, au­to­mo­tive and aero­space in­dus­tries, for ex­am­ple, now have ac­cess to an in­no­v­a­tive and high­ly ef­fi­cient al­ter­na­tive to sil­i­cone, poly­imide or mi­ca heat­ing el­e­ments. “Our new ce­ram­ic heater is of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est to users who adopt par­tic­u­lar­ly in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach­es in the de­vel­op­ment and op­ti­miza­tion of so­lu­tions for ther­mal man­age­ment or medi­um tem­per­a­ture con­trol,” says Key Ac­count Man­ag­er Daniel Hon­sel. Specif­i­cal­ly, the Hi-Wat­ty Light is used in ap­pli­ca­tions such as au­to­mat­ed semi­con­duc­tor test sys­tems for au­to­mo­tive en­gi­neer­ing or in the con­text of flip-chip as­sem­bly, a high-tech process for con­tact­ing mi­cro­elec­tron­ic el­e­ments with­out a housing.

Hi-Wat­ty Light from hotset fea­tures a very high ther­mal con­duc­tiv­i­ty of 180 W/m • K (or high­er) – sim­i­lar to that of metal­lic alu­minum – as well as ex­cel­lent pow­er den­si­ty and ther­mal shock re­sis­tance. Its ex­cep­tion­al­ly com­pact de­sign means that it re­quires on­ly min­i­mal in­stal­la­tion space. In­stal­la­tion is not sub­ject to any spe­cial re­quire­ments. Its ther­mal ex­pan­sion rate is just 4.8 x 10^-6/ °C and the con­tact re­sis­tance at room tem­per­a­ture (25 °C) is 2.6 x 10¹⁴ Ω • cm. Daniel Hon­sel al­so em­pha­sizes that ” the AlN heater is a gen­uine hid­den cham­pi­on and hotset is one of the few sup­pli­ers in Eu­rope to have such a tiny but pow­er­ful ce­ram­ic heater in its prod­uct range”.

Four ready-to-in­stall variants
hotset of­fers the new AlN heater in four stan­dard ver­sions for volt­ages from 100 to 200 volts, which dif­fer in their di­men­sions and tech­ni­cal pa­ra­me­ters. The sizes, in­clud­ing the ca­bles, vary from 12 x 2.5 mm to 50 x 2.5 mm, the out­puts from 45 to 1,600 watts, the pow­er den­si­ties from 16 to 96 W/cm² and the re­sis­tance val­ues from 25 to 400 Ω. What all vari­ants have in com­mon is the de­sign for a max­i­mum op­er­at­ing tem­per­a­ture of 400 °C and the con­struc­tion con­sist­ing of a ce­ram­ic heat­ing plate with two cur­rent-car­ry­ing lines and a sig­nal ca­ble run­ning be­tween them for con­nect­ing mea­sur­ing and con­trol sys­tems. The AlN heater is al­ways de­liv­ered ready for in­stal­la­tion on sur­faces or for in­tro­duc­tion in­to pipes and process ves­sels car­ry­ing me­dia. “Al­so worth men­tion­ing is that this heater has high-qual­i­ty elec­tri­cal in­su­la­tion and is high­ly re­sis­tant to cor­ro­sion,” adds Daniel Honsel.