Leveraging Hotspots and Improving Chip Reliability via Carbon Nanotube Grid Thermal Structure

The increasing power consumption of integrated circuits (ICs) enabled by technology scaling requires more efficient heat dissipation solutions to improve overall chip reliability and reduce hotspots. Rapidly growing 3-D IC technology strengthens the requirement with more devices stacked per unit area. Thermal interface material (TIM) and MicroChannel are widely adopted strategies to resolve the heat dissipation problem. In recent years, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been proposed as a promising TIM due to their superior thermal conductivity. Several CNT-based thermal structures for improving chip heat dissipation have been proposed and demonstrated significant temperature reduction. In this project, we developed an improved CNT TIM structure which includes a CNT grid and thermal vias. It collaborates with MicroChannel to dissipate heat more efficiently in 3-D chips and at the same time, obtain more uniform chip thermal profiles. We present simulation-based experimental results that indicate up to 19.88% peak temperature reduction, 7.81% average temperature reduction, over 66% maximum temperature difference reduction on chip and 17.26% improvement in chip reliability for IBM-PLACE 2.0 circuit benchmarks, showing the effectiveness of our proposed thermal structure for resolving thermal challenge and improving chip reliability in 3-D IC.