It is a fact that electronic devices used both at home and in an engineering environment are becoming increasingly advanced and compact. These may include smartphones and tablet computers; microcontrollers and sensors all are becoming more powerful yet smaller in physical size. As their performance increases and their size decreases, these devices generate more heat, which can cause safety issues and cause them to malfunction possible costing the engineering company money in terms of lost production.

Engineers have been trying to develop technologies that could prevent the electronics used in a manufacturing setting from overheating and one proposed solution incorporates the use of heat spreaders, layers that promote the spread and dissipation of heat inside these devices.

Heat spreaders are cooling systems comprised of materials with a high-thermal conductivity, such as copper and aluminium. These systems can spread the heat generated by the devices across a larger surface area, making it easier for them to dissipate heat into the surrounding environment. New research is being carried out to improve the effectiveness of these heat spreaders by applying different types of coating to the metals used and tests are currently ongoing to find out if these changes will be cost effective to any engineering company choosing to use them.