Journal of Electronics Cooling and Thermal Control, 2021, 10, 15-33 http://www.scirp.org/journal/jectc ISSN Online: 2162-6170 ISSN Print: 2162-6162 DOI: 10.4236/jectc.2021.102002 May 18, 2021 15 Journal of Electronics Cooling and Thermal Control Best Practices for Thermal Modeling in Microelectronics with Natural Convection Cooling: Sensitivity Analysis Mamadou Kabirou Touré * , Papa Momar Souaré, Julien Sylvestre Institut Interdisciplinaire d’Innovation Technologique (3IT), Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada Abstract A detailed sensitivity study was carried out on various key parameters from a high precision numerical model of a microelectronic package cooled by nat- ural convection, to provide rules for the thermal modeling of microelectronic packages subjected to natural convection heat transfer. An accurate estimate of the junction temperature, with an error of less than 1˚C, was obtained compared to the experimental data for the vertical and horizontal orienta- tions of the test vehicle in the JEDEC Still Air configuration. The sensitivity study showed that to have an accurate estimate of the temperature, the fol- lowing elements should be present in the thermal model: radiation heat transfer in natural convection cooling; a computational fluid dynamics analy- sis to find realistic convection coefficients; detailed models of the high con- ductivity elements in the direction of the heat flow towards the environment; and finally precise values for the thicknesses of layers and the thermal prop- erties of the substrate and the printed circuit board. Keywords Computational Fluid Dynamics, Computational Heat Transfer, Microelectronic Packaging, Natural Convection, Radiation, Thermal Analysis, Thermal Management 1. Introduction The performance of microelectronic systems deteriorates rapidly when their temperature exceeds a certain limit. For some JEDEC standards used in qualifi- cation and reliability tests, operating temperature limits are set, for example, to How to cite this paper: Touré, M.K., Souaré, P.M. and Sylvestre, J. (2021) Best Practices for Thermal Modeling in Micro- electronics with Natural Convection Cool- ing: Sensitivity Analysis. Journal of Elec- tronics Cooling and Thermal Control, 10, 15-33. https://doi.org/10.4236/jectc.2021.102002 Received: March 7, 2021 Accepted: May 15, 2021 Published: May 18, 2021 Copyright © 2021 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access