Thermal performance impacts of heat spreading lids on flip chip packages: With and without heat sinks

Heat spreading lids on a flip chip package can provide many thermal and mechanical advantages. Major drawbacks are higher module costs and potentially poorer thermal performance with a heat sink. This study compares thermal performance of direct lid attach (DLA) and bare die flip chip packages and addresses the roles of interface resistance and lid thickness. The IBM SLCTM package is tested and modeled. JEDEC standard wind tunnel tests as well as CFD models are used for analysis. The study reveals that the DLA design without additional heat sinking can provide significantly better thermal performance compared to the bare die package, depending on package size and airflow rate. With a heat sink the performance of the lidded package can be superior or inferior depending on interface resistance, lid design and the standard used for comparison.