Pre-Applied Inter Chip Fill for 3D-IC Chip Joining

Three dimensional integrated circuits (3D-IC) have been proposed for the purpose of low power and high performance in recent years. Pre-applied inter chip fill is required for fine pitch interconnections, large chips, and also thin chips. In addition to them, pre-applied joining process with high thermal conductive inter chip fill (HT-ICF) is strongly required for the cooling of 3D-IC. Some kinds of matrix resins and thermal conductive fillers were simulated and evaluated for pre-applied ICF. As a result, matrix and cure agent appeared to be important to both pre-applied ICF process compatibility and thermal conductivity, so that we’d selected epoxy type matrix based on controlling super molecular structure due to its mesogen unit. And not only matrix but also filler appeared to be the key to improve thermal conductivity for pre-applied ICF at the same time. The thermal conductivity of conventional silica filler was only 1W/mK, so that, taking into account of thermal conductivity, density and its stability, we’d selected aluminum oxide and boron nitride as thermal conductive filler and optimized HT-ICF for pre-applied process. After composite was mixed and cured, some physical properties were measured and thermal conductivity was 1.8W/mK, CTE was below 21ppm/K and Tg was 120°C. Furthermore, new high thermal conductive filler was also studied. We’d synthesized completely new spherical BN (diameter <5um) and applied it to HT-ICF and the thermal conductivity was almost two times higher than conventional BN. In this study, we confirmed ICF physical characteristics and its pre-applied joining for 3D-IC and void-less joining was also discussed.