Thermal characterization of electronic components using a new high-resolution simulation tool

In electronic components the influence of thermo-mechanically induced stress and thermal load can be minimized by applying an efficient thermal management. Thermal simulation tools are used frequently to reduce the number of experiments needed for thermal characterization of the semiconductor components. However, using commercially available software packages, high effort is necessary for maintenance and for generating the thermal models. Moreover, the limitation of the node number does not allow a discretization sufficiently fine for more complex structures as exists, e.g. in high lead count packages. In this paper a new thermal simulation tool is presented which allows to create models in a very efficient way. The developed and implemented solver based on the alternating direction implicit method (ADI-method) is efficiently processing the required high node number. Moreover, the developed thermal simulation tool is applied for the thermal characterization of a 176 lead quad flat package (QFP) using a discretization with 320.000 nodes. Steady-state and transient thermal qualities of the package are investigated under boundary conditions as specified by the Joint Electronic Device Engineering Council (JEDEC). Furthermore, results obtained by thermal simulation an compared with those established from experimental procedures. Conclusions of how this new tool can be used for thermal design optimization are derived.