MesoGlue Is a Metallic Glue That Replaces Hot Solder | Hacker News Reader

MesoGlue Is a Metallic Glue That Replaces Hot Solder

eurekalert.org

77 pointssprucely13 comments

How is this different than the numerous thermally conductive filled epoxies? They come in both electrically insulating and electrically conducting varieties with many different fillers. Regardless, I wouldn't use glue to connect a CPU to a heat spreader in a conventional PC. Thermal expansion mismatch can cause issues when using glue and this also prevents re-use of the CPU or heatsink.

I frequently use thermally conductive epoxies at work to attach temperature sensors, these are relatively inexpensive so re-use isn't an issue and its important that they don't fall out and often clamping isn't practical. I also often use thermally conductive glue to attach thermoelectric (peltier) modules where clamping is difficult.

Here is the article in Advanced Materials and processes:

http://mio.asminternational.org/amp/201601/#24

and here is the article in Scientific Reports

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4653628/

Looks like they use metallic nanoparticles grown on the surface that alloy with different metallic nanoparticles on the opposite surface to stick together.

I don't see any listing for Ohm/mm2 which is where a lot of the conductive inks tend to fall over.

Sounds interesting but I'd be very curious what the resistance and how consistently it can be applied(in order to limit variation for impedance matched traces).

I'm assuming the conductivity is a lot better than existing conductive glues, though I really wish their article had actually provided some comparisons to those glues so it was easier to understand the motivation.

I could see this has it's applications, but as a hobbyist I'd want to be able to unsolder or resolder if I'd made a bad connection.

Presumably you could apply a solvent. It would be hard if the component is suface-mounted but then removing soldered surface-mounted parts isn't everyone's favourite either.

Indium and Gallium based? Sorry, but this won't replace much except maybe for certain niches, as it will simply be orders of magnitude more expensive than tin.

I'm not sure I'd ever want to permanently fix my CPU to a heatsink even if the heat transfer was better.

Sometimes the heatsink compound dries out and temperatures raise. So in a data center, the glue, if it works as well or better than compound, is a good thing. For a home machine, I agree with you -- I'd prefer the flexibility of being able to swap out my heatsink.

Another concern: how brittle is it ? How does it handle significant temperature (think CPU). And how does it handle temperature change-cycles (warm, cold, warm, cold, ...) ?

Sounds like it was named by Jar Jar Binks.

Blogspam.

Rewrite of http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-01/nu-rmg010816....

Ok, we changed the URL to that from http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/11/mesoglue-is-a-metallic-glue....

No more bodge wires. This will have price impacts when your board has minor errors. No more repairs. And more more pilfering of components :-(. Sounds like planned obsolescence to me! Apple will probably use it first.

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