A Novel Indium Metal Thermal Interface Material and Package Design Configuration to Enhance High-Power Advanced Si Packages Thermal Performance

High performance computing (HPC) flip chip packages provide powerful computing to solve complex problems in science, engineering, and business applications. High-performance flip chip package is built with advanced Si nodes, which may include multi-dice system to achieve great performance. Its market also grows significantly in recent years. These flip chip packages could generate more than 1000W power consumption. Thus, development of new thermal interface material (TIM) to enhance thermal performance of high-performance flip chip package is a key focus area. An indium metal with high thermal conductivity (81 W/mK) is used to demonstrate end-of-line thermal performance for advanced Si packaging with high power consumption. The thermal resistance theta-JC (Rjc) is the key parameter while evaluating the thermal performance of lidded flip chip package as well as to validate TIM material characterization and package design configuration. In this study, a thermal test chip is designed and assembled into lidded flip chip package, and indium metal TIM is applied for thermal performance validations. A plunger with pneumatic cylinder and chiller water-cooling system is applied for lidded flip chip package thermal performance Rjc measurement. This work is to validate indium metal TIM thermal performance for lidded flip chip package with high power (1000 watts above) dissipation through Rjc thermal measurement. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling method was conducted using electronics cooling simulation software FloTHERM (R) to study the indium metal TIM integrated with package design guidance for lidded flip chip packaging. Modeling results were calibrated with experimental thermal test chip junction temperature (Tj) and package thermal performance Rjc measurements. Based on collected modeling and measurement data, it was revealed that indium metal TIM is capable of dissipating 1000 watts power consumption and still maintains maximum chip junction temperature at 105 degrees C. The proposed methodology in this paper has been validated and package design guideline for indium metal TIM application to meet package with high power thermal performance requirements will be proposed upon the findings of this study, which product / package designers can benefit from the superior devices and advanced packaging.