Large volume manufacture of dymalloy

The purpose of this research was to test the commercial viability and feasibility of Dymalloy, a composite material to measure thermal conductivity. Dymalloy was developed as part of a CRADA with Sun Microsystems. Sun Microsystems was a potential end user of Dymalloy as a substrate for MCMS. Sun had no desire to be involved in the manufacture of this material. The goal of this small business CRADA with Spectra Mat was to establish the high volume commercial manufacturing industry source for Dymalloy required by an end-user such as Sun Microsystems. The difference between the fabrication technique developed during the CRADA and this proposed work related to the mechanical technique of coating the diamond powder. Mechanical parts for the high-volume diamond powder coating process existed; however, they needed to be installed in an existing coating system for evaluation. Sputtering systems similar to the one required for this project were available at LLNL. Once the diamond powder was coated, both LLNL and Spectra Mat could make and test the Dymalloy composites. Spectra Mat manufactured Dymalloy composites in order to evaluate and establish a reasonable cost estimate on their existing processing capabilities. This information was used by Spectra Mat to define the market and cost-competitive products that could be commercialized from this new substrate material