Companies working in the automotive, high-performance computing, industrial and networking chip sectors increasingly require high heat dissipation and other thermal management techniques in the front-end and back-end chip manufacturing process, according to industry sources. Now chip heat dissipation is increasingly valued by packaging manufacturers, and its heat dissipation performance can be improved by up to 50 times.

Demand for materials with manufacturing processes that enhance heat dissipation has been growing strongly, the sources said. For example, in OSAT, not only traditional wire-bonding and flip-chip packaging, but also advanced wafer-level packaging now require thermal management techniques.

According to IC packaging leadframe suppliers, ASE Technology has developed its proprietary aQFN (Advanced Quad Flat No-Lead) packaging technology to provide better heat dissipation than conventional QFN processes. OSAT's aQFN package has already attracted orders from Qualcomm and MediaTek, as well as several major automotive chip suppliers, the sources said.

In addition, ASE's aQFN technology is already comparable to flip-chip packaging based on BT substrates at a lower material cost, the sources noted.

ASE has also introduced its proprietary HP FC-BGA (High-Performance Flip Chip Ball Grid Array) package to further enhance heat dissipation for server chips and other mid- to high-end equipment applications. Sources pointed out that the material used in ASE's HP FC-BGA is already in high demand.

Suppliers of lead frames and other packaging materials remain optimistic about the outlook for sales this year, despite slowing demand for mobile phones and other consumer electronics, the sources said.

The manufacturing of third-generation semiconductors also requires high heat dissipation and other thermal management techniques, the sources said. For example, SiC power module materials used in Tesla electric vehicles all require upgraded features to enhance thermal performance.

Nature: Chip cooling performance can be increased by 50 times

In recent years, researchers have begun to explore new technologies that embed liquid cooling modules directly inside chips to achieve more efficient cooling effects, but this technology has not yet solved the dilemma of separate processing of electronic devices and cooling systems, so that embedded cooling cannot be used. The full energy saving potential of the system.

On September 9, 2020, Professor Elison Matioli and his doctoral student Remco Van Erp from the Power and Wide Bandgap Electronics Research Laboratory (POWERlab) of the Institute of Electrical Engineering of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) published in Nature A latest research achievement has achieved a new breakthrough in chip cooling technology.

Using a microfluidic electronics co-design scheme, the researchers co-engineered microfluidic and electronic components within the same semiconductor substrate to produce a monolithically integrated manifold-microchannel cooling structure that can efficiently manage the large-scale transistors generated. Heat flux.

The study found that the single-phase water-cooled heat flux exceeds 1 KW/cm2, and its cooling coefficient of performance (COP) reaches an unprecedented level (over 10,000), which is a 50-fold increase compared to parallel microchannels.