Characterisation of test vehicle for in-situ measurement of die attach thermal conductivity

The continuing trend in the automotive and aviation industries to reduce complexity of electronic systems by removing cooling results in a need for high temperature electronics and associated packaging technologies. To ensure reliability over long periods of time the degradation of the packaging materials should be characterised. Epoxies show great promise as a reliable die attach solution for high temperature electronics due to their high bond strength, resistance to fatigue and chemical stability at temperatures up to 250°C. This work presents a method and test vehicle for measuring the thermal conductivity of an epoxy die attach. The test vehicle is constructed by using the epoxy under test to bond a die with an integrated PTC heater to an alumina substrate. To measure the thermal conductivity the heater heats the die for a few seconds after which the die allowed to cool down to the temperature of the substrate. The temperature of the cooling die is monitored and the time constant of the temperature decay is used to calculate the thermal conductivity of the die attach. Previous work demonstrated that this method can provide realistic information on the state of the die attach by relating the measured thermal conductivity to the shear strength of the die. Additionally the method is non destructive and can be used to monitor the degradation of the attach, such as fatigue cracking during thermal cycling. Here the test vehicle is modeled using the finite element method to get a better understanding of what temperatures the die attach is subjected to and to improve the thermal conductivity measurement.