Thermal characterization of electronic components using a newhigh-resolution simulation tool

摘要

In electronic components the influence of thermo-mechanicallyinduced stress and thermal load can be minimized by applying anefficient thermal management. Thermal simulation tools are usedfrequently to reduce the number of experiments needed for thermalcharacterization of the semiconductor components. However, usingcommercially available software packages, high effort is necessary formaintenance and for generating the thermal models. Moreover, thelimitation of the node number does not allow a discretizationsufficiently fine for more complex structures as exists, e.g. in highlead count packages. In this paper a new thermal simulation tool ispresented which allows to create models in a very efficient way. Thedeveloped and implemented solver based on the alternating directionimplicit method (ADI-method) is efficiently processing the required highnode number. Moreover, the developed thermal simulation tool is appliedfor the thermal characterization of a 176 lead quad flat package (QFP)using a discretization with 320.000 nodes. Steady-state and transientthermal qualities of the package are investigated under boundaryconditions as specified by the Joint Electronic Device EngineeringCouncil (JEDEC). Furthermore, results obtained by thermal simulation ancompared with those established from experimental procedures.Conclusions of how this new tool can be used for thermal designoptimization are derived