High resolution thermal simulation of electronic components

An efficient thermal management in electronic components is essential to mi nimize the influence of thermomechanically induced stress and thermal load. Frequently, thermal simulation tools are applied to reduce the number of e xperiments needed for thermal characterization of the semiconductor compone nts. However, for using commercially available software packages, much effo rt is necessary for maintenance and for generating the thermal models. More over, the limitation of the node number does not allow a discretization suf ficiently fine for more complex structures as in high lead count packages. In this paper, a new thermal simulation tool is presented, which allo rvs o ne to create models in a very efficient way. The developed and implemented solver based on the alternating direction implicit method is efficiently pr ocessing the required high node number. Moreover, the developed thermal sim ulation tool is applied for the thermal characterization of a 176 lead quad flat pack (QFP-package) 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 Engineerin g Council (JEDEC). Further, results obtained by thermal simulation are comp ared with those established from experimental procedures. Conclusions of ho w this new tool can be used for thermal design optimization are derived. (C ) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.