Hotspot thermal management of silicon-based high power hetero-integration

Abstract

Extremely uneven thermal distribution due to the hotspots generating at the transistor channel regions on GaN power chip is one of the major obstacles to high power hetero-integration on silicon. In this work, a 12 mm × 18 mm × 0.7 mm embedded converging-diverging microchannel (CDMC) cooler silicon interposer (SI) is put forward to address the hotspot cooling. A 5.3 mm × 3.5 mm × 0.08 mm GaN monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) 3-stage power amplifier (PA) chip with DC heating power of ∼ 101 W was integrated on the SI to evaluate the on-chip hotspot cooling performance. The average hotspot heat flux was up to 306.8 ∼ 307.1 W/mm2, and the average chip heat flux achieved 545.4 ∼ 546.3 W/cm2. The maximum junction temperature of the GaN chip on CDMC SI was 137.2 ∼ 147.4 °C with the pressure drop of 122.8 ∼ 394.3 kPa and pumping power of 0.41 ∼ 3.29 W at 70 °C ambient temperature. The thermal and hydraulic characteristics of the CDMC SI are analyzed based on field synergy principle and thermodynamic properties using finite element method (FEM). The heat transfer coefficient (HTC) of the CDMC SI has 22.4 ∼ 35.4% increase compared with that of a typical microjet array (MJA) SI. The cooling performance and efficiency of the CDMC SI have been validated theoretically and practically to be prior to those of the MJA SI, and it is a promising solution for high power hetero-integration on silicon with brilliant hotspot thermal management capability.