Numerical simulation and experimental verification of the thermal contact properties of the polymers bonds

The important "bottleneck" of heat dissipation in electronic packages may be due to the thermal contact resistance (TCR). The high thermal contact resistance reduces the amount of heat which can be transmitted from the heat source to the heat sink and the same raises the device temperature and reduces the overall reliability of the package due to thermo-mechanical stresses. Most often the thermal contact properties are not known and some assumptions have to be made in order to simulate the temperature distribution over electronic packages with thermal contacts. The lack of knowledge of precise thermal conductivity properties of most electronic packaging materials (adhesives, polymers, etc.) is a basic problem in the numerical simulation of temperature distribution in modem electronic packages. This is especially true in the case of polymer materials, with the growing demand on diminishing the size of microelectronic packages and increasing heat consumption in a unit area. The current paper is focused on assessment of the polymer layer and polymer thermal contact conductivity properties through an experimental setup and the follow up application of the results to numerical simulation.