Thermo-Mechanical Fatigue Life Prediction of Orthotropic Composite Pin Fin Heat Sinks for Electronic Packaging

Heat sinks are used in modern electronic packaging system to enhance and sustain system thermal performance by dissipating heat away from IC components. Pin fins are commonly used in heat sink applications. Conventional metallic pins fins are efficient in low Biot number range whereas high thermal performance can be achieved in high Biot number regions with orthotropic composite pin fins due to their adjustable thermal properties. However, several challenges related to performance as well as manufacturing need to be addressed before they can be successfully implemented in a heat sink design. A heat sink assembly with metallic base plate and polymer composite pin fins is a solution to address manufacturing constraints. During the service life of an electronic packaging, the heat sink assembly is subjected to power cycles. Cyclic thermal stresses will be important at the pin-fin and base-plate interface due to thermal mismatch. The cyclic nature of stresses can lead to fatigue failure that will affect the reliability of the heat sink and electronic packaging. A finite element model of the heat sink is used to investigate the thermal stress cyclic effect on thermo-mechanical reliability performance. The aim is to assess the reliability performance of the epoxy bond at the polymer composite pin fins and metallic base plate interface in a heat-sink assembly.