Finite element analysis of bond line thickness and fiber distribution in solder based thermal interface materials

Paper in proceedings, 2017

As microelectronic devices continue to decrease in size, failure of these devices is commonly attributed to ineffectual thermal management. Hence, increased thermal failures at elevated temperature has accounted for some of their reliability concerns and expected to be a major bottleneck for future development of microelectronics. For the thermal management, solder based materials give a better performance as thermal interface materials (TIM). However, these materials have a marginal reliability due to their higher Young's modulus. Therefore new type of solder based nano polymer composite (SMNPC) material is introduced. The SMNPC is composed of Sn-Ag-Cu (SAC) infiltrated through a silver coated PA6, 6 polymer fiber mesh to address electrical, thermal and mechanical challenges. In this work, finite element modeling was employed to investigate the thermal and mechanical properties of the composite material by varying polymer distribution, total volume of polymer and bond fine thickness (BLT). The composite is demonstrated to possess high heat transfer capability and lower elastic modulus as shown in Figure 1. All the results demonstrate that the developed SMNPC is proved a good alternative for conventional TIMs to improve thermal and mechanical properties.