Introduction Since their introduction, multilayer printed circuit boards have provided a significant benefit to the thermal management of IC packages. As is widely recognized, the power and ground planes in these boards function as fins…read more
Thermal Vias – A Packaging Engineer’s Best Friend
August 1st, 2004
Introduction In the 1990′s, with the advent of surface mounting of semiconductor packages, multilayer printed circuit boards and multilayer substrates for Ball Grid Array packages were introduced. In order to create electrical interconnections between the…read more
The 45° Heat Spreading Angle – An Urban Legend?
November 1st, 2003
Ever hear about the 45° heat spreading angle? Most of us have. However, no one I’ve talked to seems to know where it came from. Is it an urban legend, such as alligators in the…read more
Calculations for Thermal Interface Materials
August 1st, 2003
It’s no news to any of the readers of this publication that the increased power dissipation of integrated circuits has led to continuous refinement of package designs and component materials. This trend has increased the…read more
Thermal Calculations for Multi-chip Modules
November 1st, 2002
Due to the flexible manufacturing processes for producing BGA packages, there has been an explosion of new package designs, many of which contain more than one integrated circuit chip [1]. Existing industry standards for IC…read more
Simplified transient model for IC packages
August 1st, 2002
Previous installments of this column have all dealt with situations in which the die temperature was assumed to be at a constant temperature after the system had achieved the steady state. However, there are many…read more
The Many Flavors of Ball Grid Array Packages
February 1st, 2002
By now, it is a tired truism to say that the consumer electronics industry has consistently delivered on its promise to provide products that are smaller, faster, and more feature-rich at an ever cheaper price.…read more
Characterizing a package on a populated printed circuit board
May 1st, 2001
This column has emphasized methods of analyzing packages in the JEDEC-standard test environment. A thermal metric that lends itself to analyses of system applications is the junction-to-board thermal characterization parameter, JB. If one knows the…read more
Don’t underestimate radiation in electronic cooling
February 1st, 2001
don’t underestimate radiation in electronics cooling Bruce M. Guenin, Ph.D., Associate Editor, Amkor Technology, Inc. It is easy to underestimate the role of thermal radiation as a significant contributor to electronics cooling in environments without…read more
Component thermal characterization
February 1st, 2001
For decades, the worldwide electronics industry has produced a stream of products that continue to amaze us with their capabilities, their compactness, and their low price. This track record is due, in part, to an…read more
Determining the junction temperature in a semiconductor package, part IV – localized heat generation on the die
September 1st, 2000
In the standard thermal test environment, thermal test chips are designed to dissipate the applied power uniformly over most of the die surface. However, in many situations of practical interest, the power is dissipated over…read more
Determining the junction temperature in a semiconductor package, part III the use of the junction-to-board thermal characterization parameter
May 1st, 2000
In recent issues, this column has dealt with the use of a number of thermal metrics to calculate the junction temperature of integrated circuits under various conditions. These metrics explored were JA, JC, and JT.…read more
Determining the junction temperature in a plastic semiconductor package, part II
September 1st, 1999
In the majority of applications involving plastic surface-mount packages, most of the heat generated by integrated circuits will flow to the printed circuit board (PCB) by way of the package leads and then to In…read more
Determining the junction temperature in a plastic semiconductor package, part 1
May 1st, 1999
One of the primary tasks of the thermal engineer is to determine the temperature of the junction (active circuitry on an integrated circuit) for the various packages in a system. Measurements performed in the industry-standard…read more
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