Effect of molding compound thermal conductivity on thermal performance of molded multi-chip modules

Exploratory work has been carried out to investigate filled epoxy systems for thermal management enhancements for plastic encapsulated integrated circuits. A computational study was conducted to examine the effect of molding compound thermal conductivity on thermal resistance of a molded multi-chip module. Seven different molding thermal conductivities were considered. The air velocity was varied from natural convection to high-velocity forced convection. The results showed that an eight-fold increase in molding compound thermal conductivity reduces the junction-to-ambient thermal resistance by 20% in natural convection and by 54% in high-velocity forced convection