New packaging tech integrates cooling, power generation

Nextreme Inc. has integrated cooling and power generation into the copper pillar bumping process used in high-volume electronic packaging. This breakthrough addresses two of the most serious issues in electronics today—thermal and power management constraints. Nextreme's approach uses fully scalable technology to deliver new functionality in flip chip applications.

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It is widely known that heat and power are gating progress. At the chip, package and system level, higher densities, more features, higher speeds and miniaturization are all contributing to more heat and higher power densities emanating from our electronics.

Nextreme's technology addresses thermal and power issues at their core. Imagine a house with an overheated element on a kitchen stove. Rather than air conditioning the entire house to maintain the stove top temperature, it would be much better to cool the overheating element locally and directly. Nextreme's "thermally active" copper pillar bump enables exactly this approach for electronics. The result is higher performance and efficiency without higher system-level cooling.

Breakthrough solution
Nextreme's technology extends the use of conventional solder bumped interconnects to provide active cooling of a flip chipped component using widely accepted copper pillar bumping (CPB) process technology. Nextreme's process enhancement also enables power-generating capabilities within copper pillar bumps for energy scavenging applications. Without this breakthrough solder bumps could previously only provide mechanical and electrical functionality.

Copper pillar bump (CPB) interconnect developed for high performance/high density electric interconnect is considered to be the future of flip chip. This is an industry accepted solution, already being used by Intel (Presler, Yonah), Amkor, Casio and others.

Nextreme's thermally active copper pillar bump adds cooling, temperature control and power generation functionality to the CPB process. Nextreme's process can be implemented in discrete or integrated applications.

Nextreme's thermally active copper pillar bump has already demonstrated a number of world firsts: a temperature difference of 60°C has been achieved across the 60?m (0.06mm) high Nextreme CPB by running an electrical current through it; the Nextreme CPB demonstrated maximum power pumping capabilities exceeding 150W/cm?; when subjected to heat the Nextreme CPB has demonstrated the capability to generate up to 10mW of power per bump.

The Nextreme CPB devices have passed initial reliability testing and are currently entering into full GR-468 reliability testing. Nextreme has previously sampled engineering prototypes. Pilot production has started in December.

To download the thermal copper pillar bump white paper, click here.