High-performance, high-reliability microelectronic devices are essential for many applications. Thermal management is required to ensure that the temperature of semiconductor devices remains in a safe operating range. Advanced materials, such as silver-sintered die attach (the bond layer between the semiconductor die and the heat sink) and metal-diamond composite heat sinks, are being developed for this purpose. These are typically multilayered structures, with individual layer thicknesses ranging from tens of micrometers to millimeters. The effective thermal conductivity of individual layers likely differs from their bulk values due to interface effects and potential material imperfections. A method is needed to characterize the thermal resistance of these structures at the design optimization stage to understand what effect non-idealities may have on the final packaged device temperature. We have adapted the frequency-domain thermoreflectance technique to measure at low frequencies, from 10 Hz to 10 kHz, enabling multiple layers to be probed at depths from tens of micrometers to millimeters, which is tailored to assess novel device packaging and heat sinks. This is demonstrated by measuring the thermal resistance of a sintered silver die attach.

Fiberglass composite (FG) is widely used as a metal substitute in general applications due to its corrosion and chemical resistance, relatively high strength, and low cost. Still, the FG is deficient in performance and relatively heavy for airframes. Carbon fiber composite (CF) is utilized instead as it has greater performance and lower weight. However, the CF is brittle and expensive. Thus, in this work, we combine FG and CF into two types of hybrid composites to achieve a cost-effective solution with greater or comparable mechanical properties to those of CF. The first one uses FG as core and CF as skins (SWFG). The second one uses CF as core and FG as skins (SWCF). Their mechanical properties and cost-performance ratios (CPR) are compared. The results show that the mechanical properties of the SWFG composite, especially the modulus of elasticity, are considerably improved over the FG and nearly match those of the CF. Also, the SWFG has better CPR regarding tensile properties and flexural modulus than the SWCF and the CF. The SWFG shows promising potential as an alternative to the CF due to its comparable performance and almost 40% lower cost than the CF.

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