NSF Award
8920722
This is a continued study of methods for enhancing the cooling of small high intensity UV lamps. The lamps are presently used for a variety of industrial applications: lower power density light sources for drying industrial inks, coatings and adhesives on papers, metals, plastic, and glasses; and higher power density sources in the manufacture of semiconductor device and in imaging applications. Phase I research made promising improvements on the efficiency of jet impingement cooling and created a better understanding of the mechanisms involved. Phase II research will optimize the improvements and apply the results to actual lamp systems suitable imaging and semiconductor applications. In addition, more advanced mechanisms of cooling will be investigated, such as closed cycle helium cooling and evaporative cooling techniques. Improvement of the cooling techniques for the lamps will allow the design and construction of UV light sources with power densities even greater than the current limit of 500 W/cc, and these have new applications, including DUV (deep U.V.) optical lithography for manufacturing semiconductors, and in the next generation projection televisions.
