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Gold Leaf for Cooling?

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the neat thing about gold leaf is when it is burnished onto say the bottom of a heatsink it sticks like crazy.
How come? It has to do with the sharing of valence electrons, I'm pretty sure about this. But been wrong before. Anyways the theory here would be that those two materials are then very close together. Now If the two mating surfaces (cpu, heatsink, ) were really true, and you could somehow gaurentee that the gold would be allowed to fill the gap, with sufficient pressure and extreme cleanliness I think the gold would be a better themal bridge than the paste.
 
cold mop (Jun 21, 2001 03:54 p.m.):
the neat thing about gold leaf is when it is burnished onto say the bottom of a heatsink it sticks like crazy.
How come? It has to do with the sharing of valence electrons, I'm pretty sure about this. But been wrong before. Anyways the theory here would be that those two materials are then very close together. Now If the two mating surfaces (cpu, heatsink, ) were really true, and you could somehow gaurentee that the gold would be allowed to fill the gap, with sufficient pressure and extreme cleanliness I think the gold would be a better themal bridge than the paste.


gold doesn't share valence electrons. it electron configuration is as follows
[Xe] 6s2 5d1 4f14 5d8

What Gold does it shift it so that its D orbital is full and its S is half full which is much more stable

[Xe] 6s1 5d1 4f14 5d9

Now i don't know quite why gold leaf would stick like crazy. electro static properties would do that as well as an attraction to the electron rich gold. But no sharing is trully going on(well maybe, we still aren't too sure how metallic bonds work). The interesting question here is If you use gold leaf instead of goop, will the increase in the thermal properties equal out or improve upon a lesser material which contacts more surface area. This would be an excellent experiment.
 
thanks for the clarification, no sharing huh, may not be any good then. Could the gold adopt (see it as one of it's own) one of the electrons from the other material so the S would be full as well. I can't remember this stuff. "Of all the things I've lost..I miss my mind the most"
 
no it won't. All metals have very low electron affinities which is the desire of an atom to gain an electron. They all want to loose their electrons to achieve a stable orbital. What gold will do is loose that one electron in the outer S shell.
 
If my calcs are correct (which I doubt...), then wouldn't the gold foil only have to cover 2.5% the surface area as the Arctic Silver II to be just as effective? I'm not doing any of the Physics heat flow calculations (I forgot how too...) but just simple division. (8/317)*100. Would this not be a correct way to determine the percentage area it would have to cover to be just as effective?

If someone here remembers the physics (or is willing to help me out with them :) ) I would like a double check on my figure. Seems OK to me.. And at ony 2.5% the area, not much of the chip has to be directly touched... Of course I am only guessing at the math since I forgot the physics, so I'm not sure.

JigPu
Forgetter of physics...
 
probably something like that. This is a great idea, oh won't somebody try it out!
 
JigPu (Jun 21, 2001 10:26 p.m.):
If my calcs are correct (which I doubt...), then wouldn't the gold foil only have to cover 2.5% the surface area as the Arctic Silver II to be just as effective?

You HAVE TO COVER THE ENTIRE CPU SURFACE with somekind of interface material to the heatsink. Your CPU heats up all over and if you cover only 2.5% of it than you only have a small cold spot while the other parts get burnt on the core! I think the silicon and ceramic of the core is pretty poor at conducting heat so it'll be hard for the other parts of a CPU core to pass on their waste heat to the only area that has a 'direct link' to the heatsink -unless they are in direct contact with the HS themselves. Think of this as a bottleneck problem.
 
cjtune (Jun 22, 2001 02:42 a.m.):
JigPu (Jun 21, 2001 10:26 p.m.):
If my calcs are correct (which I doubt...), then wouldn't the gold foil only have to cover 2.5% the surface area as the Arctic Silver II to be just as effective?

You HAVE TO COVER THE ENTIRE CPU SURFACE with somekind of interface material to the heatsink. Your CPU heats up all over and if you cover only 2.5% of it than you only have a small cold spot while the other parts get burnt on the core! I think the silicon and ceramic of the core is pretty poor at conducting heat so it'll be hard for the other parts of a CPU core to pass on their waste heat to the only area that has a 'direct link' to the heatsink -unless they are in direct contact with the HS themselves. Think of this as a bottleneck problem.

I disagree. if you have just a tad touching that conducts much better, then you are ok. It would easily transfer to the gold foil. I would suspect this would touch a lot of it though.
 
The thing is, my co philosopher. Gold leaf IS very adhesive, and so thin, and gold in it self, as I said before a very soft metal. So I would think that you don't need that huge ammount of preassure to get it to stick to the different surfaces. You usually apply it with a paintbrush, and more or less paint it on.
If someone would (please) test my idea, you could pint the back of a lapped heatsink or waterblock with goldleaf, and another gold leaf onto the chip surface (lapp away the HORRIBLE printed text and stuff so the surface is clean) and then stick them toghether with a clamp or the original HSF mounting thingy. that might be enough, and still way thinner than any arctic silver would ever become, we are talking 1000ths of a millimeter here, and due to gold leafs very adhesive nature and softness, it would hopefully mould itself to fit the metal. and it has WAY higher conductivity than any grease ever. and we all know how much difference it makes to add arctic silver instead of some radioshack gunk. and that is just raising the transfer with say 3... gold leaf would raise it a few HUNDRED (given good contact would be accomplished)

Input please. this might be a VERY imortant discovery, made by me, the humble Swedish guy.
 
cjtune (Jun 22, 2001 02:42 a.m.):

Your CPU heats up all over and if you cover only 2.5% of it than you only have a small cold spot while the other parts get burnt on the core!

Yes.. But what did people do before the paste came around? to cover 100% of it? I don't know what (I'm a newbie...). It seems though that at one point in time, the heatsink would be directly touching. They didn't burn up then! (Of course, now our chips run hotter...) Remember, I'm a newbie so I don't know...

JigPu
 
JigPu (Jun 22, 2001 04:48 p.m.):
cjtune (Jun 22, 2001 02:42 a.m.):

Your CPU heats up all over and if you cover only 2.5% of it than you only have a small cold spot while the other parts get burnt on the core!

Yes.. But what did people do before the paste came around? to cover 100% of it? I don't know what (I'm a newbie...). It seems though that at one point in time, the heatsink would be directly touching. They didn't burn up then! (Of course, now our chips run hotter...) Remember, I'm a newbie so I don't know...

JigPu

sure you know! You answered your own question, they produced so little heat that they did not need the paste.
 
I've been following this with great enjoyment, but something just occurred to me. Gold or Silver Leaf will fleck off and the fans will no doubt land one of those flecks on a couple of IC pins, Power Mosfets, Down in an empty PCI connector, etc. I don't mean to be a wet blanket, just thinking it through. The idea is tantalizing all the same.

Hoot
 
you could silicone the area around the cpu. Would only a problem if you where using a thermoengine. Would also want to cover those bridges. Good thought Hoot.
 
Gold Leaf for Cooling? what about Gold Leaf for Modding? ...do the hole case that would be shweet and not very difficult, monitor too
 
I read about a guy on the oc.au forums who did this, now either it was a load of bs or true but from what he said he got very good results. Gold leaf is very, very thin and soft, he didn't just put one leaf on he put a bit on. Now silver is better than gold at conducting heat, hell even copper is, but Artic silver or copper pastes are not, so even if the gold was acting as a transition between the cpu and heatsink instead of just filling in the gaps like a paste does then it may still be better. It would be interesting to see a comparrison and if I can get my hands on some gold leaf (from my reliable sources, say no more :) ) then I'll let you know if it works.
 
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