NovoLINC has launched MaxLINC, a thermal interface material (TIM) aimed at multi-kilowatt AI chips and high heat-flux cooling stacks. The company lists thermal resistance as low as 0.7 mm²•K/W for MaxLINC, and it claims “over 20%” cooling energy savings for AI servers versus phase-change TIM and thermal grease products.
MaxLINC is built on NovoLINC’s nanostructured composite architecture and is targeted at applications exceeding 100 W/cm² heat flux. The company describes the material as intended to help mitigate localized hot spots, and to maintain contact through mechanical compliance in real assemblies where package and device flatness aren’t ideal.
On packaging and integration, NovoLINC describes MaxLINC as a platform that can be used across multiple interface points: direct chip-to-cold plate interfaces, chip-to-package heat spreaders, and interfaces between packaged devices and cold plates or other cooling hardware. The company also states the TIM accommodates device and package warpage as high as 350 µm.
For data center engineers, the practical implication is straightforward: as accelerators push toward multi-kilowatt power levels, the TIM layer can become a hard limiter on junction-to-coolant performance, regardless of how aggressive the liquid loop is. A 0.7 mm²•K/W number is eye-catching, but operators will care just as much about how stable that resistance stays across thermal cycling, clamp load variation, and real-world flatness and surface finish.
“Every bit of thermal resistance we remove turns directly into headroom that can be re-directed to higher chip performance, more compute, less wasted energy, and lower operating costs for the data center operator,” said Dr. Ning Li, co-founder and CEO of NovoLINC.
MaxLINC samples are available now for customer qualification. NovoLINC also plans to expand Pittsburgh-area operations into a new facility in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania, which it says will increase capacity for manufacturing scale-up, product qualification and testing, and continued R&D. Darren Goetz, vice president of operations, said the facility is intended to support customers “as more customers move MaxLINC through qualification and toward production.”
Source: NovoLINC
