What material do you need? Thermally conductive insulator or thermal gap pad?

Many customer are unsure of what it is that they want, they just said I need a kind of thermal interface material, material, characteristics such as hardness, compression is not specific or not important, you just give me thermal pad with thermal conductivity of 2.0W/mK or any. How can we recommend a thermal interface material under this conditions? It’s a waste of time and energy.

I had a customer who was looking for a thermal silicone pad with 2.0W/mK thermal conductivity, but no more requirements, for example, hardness, reinforcement. It’s abnormal, because these features will affect performance. I requested the drawing and data sheet of material they used before and I found what he want is a 0.2mm thick thermally conductive insulator, not a thermal silicone pad.

How do we judge and select the right material? Thermal conductivity is excluded from the grounds. Firstly, we can check the hardness, thermal insulator is harder than thermal silicone gap pad, its hardness is marked Shore A and it’s marked Shore 00 for thermal silicone pad. Secondly, we should notice the thickness. Thermally conductive insulator is a ultrathin fiberglass which is coated by silicone on two side, it will not exceed 0.38mm unsually.

We must examine the specification, design and assembly requirements before we determine to select a thermal material, avoiding waste of time and energy.