[s-cars] Thermal properties of anodizing Aluminum

[MLP]

Yes, I came across the "Do you ever want to weld on this again"  issue last
night as well.

The conundrum for me so far revolves about heat propagation / transfer /
movement via conductivity vs. convection vs. "emisivity" or radiation.

I've kind of discounted "emsisivity" as much of a player in our (the IC Q's)
particular mix, but I'm not so sure where one finishes up with on the other
types of thermal transfer being affected by coatings.

I draw some comfort from the internet's ".... Why worry too much about it,
the bare Aluminum will anodize naturally anyway, even if you don't coat it,
so the questions beggars the fact that after some period of time, there is
no significant difference as far as thermal properties go, between bare
aluminum & Type 1 anodization at least.  Both surfaces will be coated with
an oxide of aluminum.

But man, was (am) I surprised by is how complicated & NOT CLEAR, or clear as
mud, the answers seem to be for what I originally sounded to me like a very
stupid, simple question!  I mean heck, there must be 200 different brands of
"anodized" aluminum heat sinks out the for cooling your computers "hot" CPU
chip!

I found & tried to post a general Q about this to the www.anodized.org
forum.  Maybe some anodizing expert out there will weigh in on the
insulating qualities of type 1 or 2 vs. "naturally" occurring aluminum oxide
coatings etc.

mlp

-----Original Message-----
From:On Behalf Of Trevor Frank

Most of what I did know about anodizing I have forgoten, in semiconductor we
really studied this layer and the different processes for a number of
reasons.  I believe most important is the fact that the thermal conductivity
of aluminum oxide is worse than pure aluminum. .....