Finite Element Modeling for Thermal Conductivity of Cement-based Encapsulation Materials

With the trend of miniaturization and the increasing power density, the operating temperature of electronic devices keeps climbing, especially for wide band-gap semiconductors such as silicon carbide and gallium nitride. The high operating temperature up to 250℃ brings challenges to encapsulation materials since traditional encapsulation materials such as epoxy resins and silicone gels hardly bear temperatures above 200℃. Calcium aluminate cement (CAC) was proved to be a promising encapsulation material, which owns high thermal stability with its operating temperature of up to 300℃. Based on its satisfied thermal stability and low cost, the thermal conductivity of CAC was researched in this work with different ratios of 10-μm-sphere-Alumina (Al
2
O
3
) fillers at different temperatures, which formed μm-scale CAC-Al
2
O
3
composites. In this work, we focused on the thermal conductivity of CAC-Al
2
O
3
composites aiming for encapsulation applications in power electronics packaging. The thermal conductivities of μm-scale CAC-Al
2
O
3
composites by the laser-flash method from room temperature to 350℃ were firstly measured. Results showed with an increasing content of fillers, the TC of CACAl
2
O
3
will increase accordinglyIt also illustrated that calcium aluminate cement was a high thermal stable encapsulation material with thermal conductivity over epoxy resins. Then, the Finite Element Model (FEM) was established and calibrated by experimental data for thermal conductivity simulation. The FEM model accuracy reached 90%. Such models for new filler materials are effective to minimize material development by actual experiments and characterizations, for CAC composite with different fillers. It also provides an alternative method in predicting other physical properties of composites such as coefficient of thermal expansion, porosity, etc.