Bi-directional Microcontrollers Monitor and Protect Medical Equipment

Introduction

Product innovations in medical diagnostic equipment and analytical instrumentation are primarily aimed at improving testing reliability to ensure repeatable results, decreasing equipment size, and reducing both equipment and procedural costs. Satisfying conflicting requirements of increased performance with lower power consumption and quieter operation in a compact design is a continuing challenge facing design engineers.

Compact Temperature Control for Medical Diagnostic and Analytical Instrumentation

Introduction

The trend to miniaturize medical diagnostic and analytical instrumentation to free up precious lab space has led engineers to pack more functionality into a tighter space constraint. This increases the heat flux by packing electronics in a smaller footprint and has led to thermal challenges. Waste heat must be efficiently managed to meet conflicting requirements of increased performance with reduced power consumption and quieter operation all in a compact design.

Thermal Management Solutions for Beverage Cooling

Overview

Refrigeration units are vital to the food and beverage industry to ensure proper storage temperatures and to maintain health and safety regulations. Refrigeration and cooling methods continually advance to simplify beverage transportation and beverage dispensing. From small consumer appliances used to refrigerate milk, coffee, beer, juice, soda and wine, to large mobile carts that transport food from a kitchen to a catering point, refrigeration ensures beverages are consumed at appropriate safe temperatures.

Cooling Solutions for Autonomous Systems

Introduction

Advances in autonomous technologies, such as smart headlights, autonomous systems for collision avoidance, and infotainment systems, require enhanced thermal protection of critical electronics to ensure optimized performance. These emerging intelligent autonomous systems are increasingly complex while decreasing in size and weight. Packing more functionality into smaller footprints has increased the heat flux density and thermal challenges in autonomous systems.

Energy Storage Systems

Background

Energy storage systems (ESS) have the power to impart flexibility to the electric grid and offer a back-up power source. Energy storage systems are vital when municipalities experience blackouts, states-of-emergency, and infrastructure failures that lead to power outages. ESS technology is having a significant impact on a wide range of markets, including data centers that utilize uninterrupted power supplies (UPS) and telecom base stations that utilize battery back-up systems.

X-ray Cooling in Industrial Scanners

Introduction

Industrial scanning equipment like X-ray machines are used in a wide variety of applications, ranging from non-destructive evaluation looking for manufacturing defects and contaminants to scanning trucks or baggage to ensure safety and security. X-ray inspection can be used for both process and quality control in automated assembly lines. Only a small portion of the energy generated by these systems is emitted as X-rays; the balance is released as heat.

Thermoelectric Cooling for Outdoor Kiosks

Introduction

Outdoor kiosks have grown in popularity in a wide variety of applications and sectors, including banking, entertainment, retail, showrooms, industrial and education. You see kiosks everywhere, from banks and airports, to theme parks and train stations. Being located outdoors, kiosks and the sensitive electronics they contain are subjected to extreme temperatures, from the cold of winter to the heat of summer. Ambient temperatures can exceed 40°C or below 10°C. Heat loads for the electronics themselves can range from 20 to more than 200 Watts.

Thermoelectric Cooling for CMOS Sensors

Introduction

For nearly 60 years CCD (charge-coupled device) sensors and CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) sensors have competed on cost and performance in a wide range of digital imaging applications. Peltier coolers (thermoelectric coolers) have cooled both technologies when the requirement demanded high-resolution images. Design engineers opted to use CCD’s for astrophotography, super-resolution microscopy, x-ray crystallography, and spectrophotometric assays. On the other hand, CMOS sensors made inexpensive digital photography a reality.

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