Thermo-fluidic coupled analysis of flip-chip mounted thermal test chips on a PCB — A numerical and experimental study

The concentration of electronic and mechanical components on a PCB (e.g. a PC main board) continues to increase, leading to higher power densities and more stringent requirements for thermal management. In current and future air-cooled applications, in addition to conductive interaction, the consequences of natural and forced thermo-fluidic coupling must also be considered during the PCB layout process. The circuit design engineer therefore needs additional information on the natural and forced fluidic influence between critical heat dissipating components, and the fluidic interference due to other, adjacent electronic and mechanical component packages. In the past, several benchmark studies have been published on convective and conductive thermal interaction for different commercially-available microelectronic packages. Nowadays, the Flip-Chip (FC) assembly technology of bare dies has become firmly established, and there is a need for a thermal benchmark study on FC assemblies. This investigation examines the natural and forced thermo-fluidic interaction between bare FC dies and other components, assembled on several test boards. A validation of the first results has shown a suitable agreement between simulation and experiment.