Heat dissipation measurement technique for semiconductor devices on printed circuit boards by using heat flux sensors

Abstract

As electronic devices become simultaneously smaller and faster, thermal management for such products requires innovative solutions, which should take into consideration ever more stricter size constraints. However, form factor is not the only challenge in designing such cooling systems, as the evaluation of cooling performance also relies on the power output of the device being cooled. Given the increased complexity in nowadays IC components (e.g. BGA's, FPGA's, FET's), properly determining their power dissipation became a challenge. Thus, this work focuses on a novel method for measuring power dissipation of higher complexity electronic devices, by employing a novel heat flux sensor in conjunction with analytical thermal models.