"Diamond microchannel heat sink. The sink (dark area) is soldered to a supporting, diamond 'strongback'. Its performance exceeds that of all other microchannel heat sinks described in literature."

The microchannel heat sink was invented by Tuckerman, who, as a graduate student at Stanford in the early '80s, foresaw that power dissipated by Silicon-based processors would one day be so great as to prohibit conducting heat to distant heat sinks. He proposed that very narrow channels (micro-channels) for coolant be etched into the chip's rearface, and demonstrated the tremendous thermal performance to be realized by such an approach. Now, two decades later, microchannels are at the leading edge of thermal control technology. And, the best microchannel ever (as far as we know) was produced in Lexington, using Raytheon's home-grown diamond.