Abstract
For the design of the next generation of microelectronic packages, thermal management is one of the key aspects and must be met by the development of polymers with enhanced thermal conductivity. While all polymer classes show a very low thermal conductivity, this shortcoming can be compensated for by the addition of fillers, yielding polymer-based composite materials with high thermal conductivity. The inorganic fillers, however, are often available only in submicron- and micron-scaled dimensions and, consequently, can sediment during the curing reaction of the polymer matrix. In this study, an epoxy/amine resin was filled with nano- and submicron-scaled alumina particles, yielding a gradient composite. It was found that the thermal conductivity according to laser flash analysis of a sliced specimen ranged from 0.25 to 0.45 W·m−1·K−1 at room temperature. If the thermal conductivity of an uncut specimen was measured with a guarded heat flow meter, the ‘averaged’ thermal conductivity was measured to be only 0.25 W·m−1·K−1. Finite element analysis revealed that the heat dissipation through a gradient composite was of intermediate speed in comparison with homogeneous composites exhibiting a non-gradient thermal conductivity of 0.25 and 0.45 W·m−1·K−1.
Highlights
Thermal management is one of the key aspects in the design of reliable microelectronic packages [1,2] as well as high-voltage machinery [3,4]
Due to the ongoing demand for integrated functions and miniaturization, geometric changes of the design are subject to limitations, which add additional importance to increasing the thermal conductivity of the materials used [10]
The range of diameters of the particles provided by the suppliers was verified by transmission electron microscopy (TEM and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) measurements of polymer films containing one type of alumina particles; dynamic light scattering (DLS) measurements failed to reproduce the diameters of the individual particles due to aggregation of the non-functionalized alumina particles (Figure 1)
Summary
Thermal management is one of the key aspects in the design of reliable microelectronic packages [1,2] as well as high-voltage machinery [3,4]. The most critical load often originates from an internally generated heat by active components such as a power metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) [5,6,7,8]. This type of silicon chip can produce high temperatures in short. Despite their broad versatility in material properties and functionality, all polymer classes show one common physico-chemical characteristic, namely, a very low thermal conductivity commonly in the range of 0.1 to
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