Thermal Management Materials for Advanced Heat Sinks used in Modern Microelectronics

Abstract

Heat sinks are used for dispensing the heat from a system in many modern microelectronic components. It helps in systematically absorbing the heat from the system and dissipating it to the atmosphere, thereby ensuring system performance, extended life and reliability. The material used for the heat transfer device is one of the utmost significant parameter, which decides the size of the heat transfer device and its heat transfer efficiency. Lower values of density, overall cost, and coefficient of thermal expansion along with higher thermal conductivity, are considered as the essential properties required for any heat sink material. Though, the Copper and Aluminium materials are generally observed to be the best materials for a heat sink applications, some of their alloys are also found to be suitable. The manufacturing difficulty, the higher cost involved, comparatively poor thermo-physical properties and insufficient investigation are some of the factors that have limited the use of advanced composites in heat sink applications. A comparative numerical analysis for different thermal management materials like Copper, Aluminium, Al2O3, AlN, and Si3N4, is presented in this paper. COMSOL MULTIPHYSICS software is used for the present analysis to check the suitability of these materials for construction of heat sink. Moreover, the study of the cost-effectiveness of the material selected is important before the actual application of that material for heat sinks.