Thermal Performance of Microelectronic Substrates With Submillimeter Integrated Vapor Chamber

Abstract

We develop a vapor chamber integrated with a microelectronic packaging substrate and characterize its heat transfer performance. A prototype of vapor chamber integrated printed circuit board (PCB) is fabricated through successful completion of the following tasks: patterning copper micropillar wick structures on PCB, mechanical design and fabrication of condenser, device sealing, and device vacuuming and charging with working fluid. Two prototype vapor chambers with distinct micropillar array designs are fabricated, and their thermal performance tested under various heat inputs supplied from a 2 mm × 2 mm heat source. Thermal performance of the device improves with heat inputs, with the maximum performance of ∼20% over copper plated PCB with the same thickness. A three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics/heat transfer (CFD/HT) numerical model of the vapor chamber, coupled with the conduction model of the packaging substrate is developed, and the results are compared with test data.