April 14 — According to a report released on April 9 by the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in response to major national needs, the institute’s Functional Carbon Materials Team—leveraging its independently developed high-efficiency 3D composite technology and large-scale manufacturing processes—implemented a “full-chain approach” encompassing “basic research—pilot-scale validation — industrial promotion,“ systematically overcame manufacturing bottlenecks in diamond-copper composite materials—including ”difficulty in dispersion,“ ”difficulty in processing,“ and ”difficulty in surface treatment"—and successfully developed a diamond-copper composite material with a thermal conductivity exceeding 1000 W/mK. The material has reached internationally advanced levels in key indicators such as thermal conductivity, thermal expansion matching, and processing precision. The team is collaborating with Jiangxi Copper Group and Ningbo Saimu Technology Co., Ltd. to advance industrial-scale production.
With the rapid development of the computing power industry and the continuous rise in the thermal design power (TDP) of chips, the “thermal wall” has become a key bottleneck constraining the upgrading of the global computing power industry. For a long time, China has been highly dependent on imported high-end thermal management materials, and issues regarding thermal conductivity efficiency and cost have directly impacted the level of self-reliance and control over computing infrastructure. Overcoming the technical challenges of extreme heat pipe technology, developing advanced thermal management materials with higher performance, and establishing a self-reliant and controllable thermal management materials supply chain are of significant strategic importance for ensuring the security of China’s computing industry and enhancing its core competitiveness.
Recently, the high-thermal-conductivity diamond/copper heat sink modules developed by the team were successfully integrated into the C8000 V3.0, the world’s first megawatt-class phase-change immersion liquid cooling rack-scale solution. This integration enhances the heat transfer capacity of chip modules by 80% and boosts chip performance by 10%.
According to the announcement, the product has been deployed in a cluster at the National Supercomputing Internet Core Node Major Science and Technology Platform (Zhengzhou, Sugon Scale), marking the world’s first large-scale application of diamond/copper high-thermal-conductivity composite materials in the thermal management of computing chips.
This achievement validates the material’s reliability under extreme heat flux density conditions, opens up a new technical pathway for packaging and thermal management of domestically produced computing chips, and holds significant strategic importance for ensuring the security and competitiveness of China’s computing industry.
