Multi-scale thermal modeling of glass interposer for mobile electronics application Sangbeom Cho Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Venky Sundaram and Rao Tummala 3-D Systems Packaging Research Center, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, and Yogendra Joshi Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Abstract Purpose – The functionality of personal mobile electronics continues to increase, in turn driving the demand for higher logic-to-memory bandwidth. However, the number of inputs/outputs supported by the current packaging technology is limited by the smallest achievable electrical line spacing, and the associated noise performance. Also, a growing trend in mobile systems is for the memory chips to be stacked to address the growing demand for memory bandwidth, which in turn gives rise to heat removal challenges. The glass interposer substrate is a promising packaging technology to address these emerging demands, because of its many advantages over the traditional organic substrate technology. However, glass has a fundamental limitation, namely low thermal conductivity (~1 W/m K). The purpose of this paper is to quantify the thermal performance of glass interposer-based electronic packages by solving a multi-scale heat transfer problem for an interposer structure. Also, this paper studies the possible improvement in thermal performance by integrating a fluidic heat spreader or vapor chamber within the interposer. Design/methodology/approach – This paper illustrates the multi-scale modeling approach applied for different components of the interposer, including Through Package Vias (TPVs) and copper traces. For geometrically intricate and repeating structures, such as interconnects and TPVs, the unit cell effective thermal conductivity approach was used. For non-repeating patterns, such as copper traces in redistribution layer, CAD drawing-based thermal resistance network analysis was used. At the end, the thermal performance of vapor chamber integrated within a glass interposer was estimated by using an enhanced effective thermal conductivity, calculated from the published thermal resistance data, in conjunction with the analytical expression for thermal resistance for a given geometry of the vapor chamber. Findings – The limitations arising from the low thermal conductivity of glass can be addressed by using copper structures and vapor chamber technology. Originality/value – A few reports can be found on thermal performance of glass interposers. However thermal characteristics of glass interposer with advanced cooling technology have not been reported. Keywords Multi-scale, Thermal modelling, Interposer, Vapour chamber Paper type Research paper International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow Vol. 26 No. 3/4, 2016 pp. 1157-1171 © Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0961-5539 DOI 10.1108/HFF-09-2015-0378 Received 16 September 2015 Revised 13 January 2016 Accepted 13 January 2016 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/0961-5539.htm This research was supported by the Glass and Silicon Interposer Industry Consortium at the Georgia Tech 3-D Systems Packaging Research Center. 1157 Multi-scale thermal modeling Downloaded by Georgia Institute of Technology At 08:37 29 August 2016 (PT)