# East Asia materials makers accelerate diamond heat spreaders for 1000W AI chips
*Advanced packaging suppliers across South Korea, Japan, and China target metal-diamond substrates and engineered TIMs to clear power density hurdles above 500 watts per square centimeter.*
**Published:** August 30, 2026
**By:** Mina Okoro
**Section:** Semiconductors & AI Hardware — Cross-border
**Format:** Why It Matters
**Confidence:** medium
**Source:** https://eastasiabrief.com/semiconductors/east-asia-materials-makers-accelerate-diamond-heat-spreaders-1000w-123
**Publisher:** East Asia Brief (https://eastasiabrief.com/)
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## What to know
- East Asian materials suppliers and outsourced semiconductor assembly and test ecosystems are responding by commercializing engineered metal-matrix composites and specialized interface polymers.
*Researchers in lab coats test advanced packaging thermal materials while reviewing a heat dissipation map on a tablet. (AI-generated image)*
Advanced semiconductor packaging suppliers and functional materials developers across South Korea, Japan, and China expanded pilot verification of diamond-composite heat spreaders and high-performance thermal interface materials on August 26, 2026, targeting the extreme thermal limits of next-generation artificial intelligence accelerators rated at 1,000 watts and above.
Thermal dissipation has emerged as the principal hardware ceiling for high-density compute architectures, where graphic processing units, custom application-specific integrated circuits, and multi-layer High Bandwidth Memory stacks are integrated onto silicon interposers and organic substrates. As power consumption per accelerator package crosses 1,000 watts and localized heat-flux hotspots exceed 500 watts per square centimeter, conventional pure copper lids, nickel-plated heat spreaders, and standard silicone-based thermal grease face severe physical degradation, dry-out, and thermal saturation.
East Asian materials suppliers and outsourced semiconductor assembly and test ecosystems are responding by commercializing engineered metal-matrix composites and specialized interface polymers. On April 9, 2026, the functional carbon materials research team at the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, collaborating with Jiangxi Copper and Ningbo Saimu Technology, finalized pilot module verifications for diamond-copper composite heat dissipation modules exhibiting bulk thermal conductivity exceeding 1,000 watts per meter-kelvin.
In South Korea, specialized composite developer The Good System documented progress on February 11, 2026, regarding its 1,000 W/m·K-class metal-matrix composite thermal materials for advanced semiconductor packaging, utilizing three-dimensional particulate alignment and close-packing methodologies to overcome the thermal mismatch between silicon dies and metallic cooling lids.
The core thermal bottleneck in 2.5D and 3D multi-die packaging lies at the primary thermal interface material layer, known as TIM1, which sits directly between the active silicon dies and the package heat spreader, and the secondary layer, TIM2, which bridges the spreader to external liquid-cooling cold plates. Resonac Holdings detailed technical specifications on February 25, 2026, for specialized high-conductivity TIM1 paste systems and elastomeric sheets designed to minimize bond-line thickness while resisting voiding under repeated high-load thermal cycling.
Standard pure copper offers an intrinsic thermal conductivity of approximately 400 W/m·K, but its high coefficient of thermal expansion, near 17 parts per million per kelvin, generates severe thermo-mechanical shear stress when bonded to silicon, which expands at roughly 2.6 to 3.0 ppm/K. This expansion mismatch induces die warpage, micro-bump cracking, and delamination across large-area packages exceeding 3,000 square millimeters.
Diamond-copper and diamond-aluminum composites address this structural constraint by combining the extreme thermal conductivity of synthetic diamond particles, which ranges between 1,200 and 2,000 W/m·K, with the mechanical ductility and matrix cohesion of copper. By precisely controlling diamond volume fractions between 55 percent and 70 percent, materials engineers tune the composite coefficient of thermal expansion down to 6 to 9 ppm/K while more than doubling the heat-spreading velocity of pure copper.
The engineering hurdles moving from laboratory synthesis to high-volume semiconductor assembly remain interfacial bonding resistance and surface finish tolerances. Synthetic diamond particles exhibit poor natural wettability with molten copper, requiring reactive carbide-forming interlayers such as chromium, titanium, or tungsten coatings applied through chemical vapor deposition or magnetron sputtering before vacuum pressure infiltration.
Surface roughness presents an equally critical barrier, because diamond-metal composites resist conventional diamond-wheel grinding and chemical mechanical planarization due to extreme hardness differentials between diamond grains and the copper matrix. For hyperscale cloud hardware architects and packaging foundries, an unpolished composite spreader creates microscopic air gaps that sharply increase interfacial thermal resistance, neutralizing bulk material gains.
In the thermal interface layer, liquid metal alloys based on gallium-indium-tin offer bulk thermal conductivity exceeding 30 W/m·K, compared with 3 to 8 W/m·K for standard particle-filled greases. However, chemical corrosion of aluminum cold plates, electrical conductivity risks caused by pump-out leakage, and intermetallic embrittlement have restricted liquid metals to specialized niche designs.
Consequently, packaging supply chains are prioritizing hybrid phase-change sheets, diamond-filled fluoroelastomer preforms, and chemically capped liquid metal emulsions that prevent pump-out while maintaining bond-line thicknesses below 20 micrometers under operating pressures of 20 to 50 pounds per square inch.
Major outsourced assembly and test houses and integrated device manufacturers in South Korea and Taiwan have expanded sample qualification programs with materials producers to evaluate composite lids for high-power data center modules. However, no single packaging foundry or OSAT has published a sole-source high-volume commercial production contract for 1,000-watt diamond-composite lids.
Packaging production lines are currently running long-term reliability stress testing, including 1,000-hour high-temperature bake tests, moisture sensitivity level assessments, and 1,500-cycle thermal shock runs spanning minus 40 degrees Celsius to 125 degrees Celsius, to verify bond integrity and matrix stability under sustained hyperscale workloads.
## Impact map
| Event | Korea | China | Japan | Global impact |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1000W thermal dissipation | composite thermal materials | diamond-copper modules | engineered TIM solutions | hyperscale AI accelerator cooling |
## In this story
- **Companies:** Resonac Holdings, Jiangxi Copper, The Good System
- **Tickers:** 4004.T, 600362.SS
- **Exposed:** Nvidia, TSMC, Samsung Electronics, SK hynix
- **Policy:** Economic Security
- **Impact:** Supply Chain, Capex, Cost Structure
## Primary sources
1. jcb-diamond.com
2. etnews.com
3. thegsystem.co.kr
4. resonac.com
5. wiwynn.com
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Cite as: East Asia Brief, "East Asia materials makers accelerate diamond heat spreaders for 1000W AI chips," August 30, 2026. https://eastasiabrief.com/semiconductors/east-asia-materials-makers-accelerate-diamond-heat-spreaders-1000w-123