Improved thermal characterization method of integrated microscale heat sinks

The thermal management of semiconductor devices is still a hot topic. Most designers, who are aware of the thermal aspects of IC design, know that new, cheaper and more efficient methods are required to keep the temperature of electronic systems low. Research by different teams regarding the cooling of stacked die structures is in progress.In this paper an improved thermal characterization method will be presented to determine the flow dependent partial thermal resistance of integrated microchannel based heat sinks. This reliable characterization method does not demand thermal isolation during the measurements, only constant environment conditions. The measurements are based on the industrial standard thermal transient testing method.On the other hand we present an approach to realize an integrated microfluidic channel based heat sink, which can be realized in the backside of the silicon chip itself. The approach is based on a cheap wet etching process instead of reactive ion etching or LIGA technologies, which enables batch processing.