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Thermal Jumper Chips

Geoffrey Hunter
Geoffrey Hunter
mbedded.ninja Author

Overview​

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/mK170W/mK1 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 heat-sinked 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