Thermal Jumper Chips

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Thermal jumper chips (TJCs) are surface mount (SMD) chip-sized components which have two pads (e.g. just like 0603 resistors). They are designed to provide good thermal conductivity between the two pads but the pads are electrically isolated from one another. They are typically made from aluminium nitride (AIN), which has a thermal conductivity of around $170W/mK$^{1 2}.

Basic construction of a thermal jumper chip from the Vishay ThermaWick family².

They are used to reduce the temperature of components and high-heat areas on a PCB, and can thermally connect “live copper pours” to better heatsinked parts of the PCB such as the ground plane.

Typical application example for a thermal jumper chip.¹

Manufacturers

TT Electronics

TT Electronics manufacturers a family of thermal jumper chips called the TJC series¹.

Vishay ThermaWick

Vishay manufactures a family of thermal jumper chips in the ThermaWick (THJP) series². For more info see the datasheet at https://www.vishay.com/docs/60157/thjp.pdf.

Footnotes

1. TT Electronics. Thermal Jumper Chip: TJC Series (datasheet). Retrieved 2022-07-29, from https://nz.mouser.com/datasheet/2/414/TJC-1594299.pdf. ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. Vishay. ThermaWickTM Thermal Jumper Surface Mount Chip (datasheet). Retrieved 2022-07-29, from https://www.vishay.com/docs/60157/thjp.pdf. ↩ ↩² ↩³