Cooling hot spots by hexagonal boron nitride heat spreaders

Abstract

As the electronic systems become smaller and faster, a thinner and higher-efficiency heat spreader is demanded to meet the thermal dissipation requirement. In this work, we proposed a layered hBN film based heat spreader to dissipate the thermal energy generated by hot spots on high power chips. The liquid phase exfoliation method was employed to synthesize hBN flakes. Different layers of hBN film were characterized using SEM, TEM and Raman spectroscopy. Afterwards, the films were directly attached onto the target power chips. The power chips were integrated with temperature sensor and hot spot in order to analyze the thermal performance of the hBN heat spreader. IR Camera was used to capture the heat spreading effect of the hBN heat spreader and monitor the temperature distribution around the hot spot. The temperature at the hot spot driven by a heat flux of around 600W/cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> was decreased by about 20% compared to the sample without the BN film. The potential of using hBN heat spreader for cooling hot spots was demonstrated in this work.