Current trends in the microelectronic industry suggest that by the mid-1990s successful thermal management will require removal of as much as 500 W and 100 W/cm² from a single chip and in excess of 10 kW and 10 W/cm³ from a multichip module. These cooling requirements pose a serious challenge to today's cooling technology and have spurred extensive research and development of advanced thermal control techniques for microelectronics. The choice of the thermal management strategy for an electronic product has a large impact on its cost, reliability, operating environment, and performance. Thus, while thermal control is just one of several enabling packaging technologies, it deserves and often receives special attention in the development of leading-edge electronic systems. Many observers believe that direct cooling with inert, dielectric liquids may become the method of choice for electronic systems of the late 1990s. This presentation begins with a review of the trends in IC technology and the state-of-the-art in single chip packages and multichip modules. It then examines the packaging development process and defines the future requirements, options, and limits of thermal management techniques. Attention is then turned to direct liquid cooling, including implementation schemes, governing phenomena, research issues, and prospects for widespread implementation.

Date Published: 25 February 1993
PDF: 25 pages
Proc. SPIE 1739, High Heat Flux Engineering, (25 February 1993); doi: 10.1117/12.140496

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1739:
High Heat Flux Engineering
Ali M. Khounsary, Editor(s)