Effects of different catalytic activation techniques on the thermal performance of flip chip heat spreader

Abstract

This paper presents the effects of two different catalytic activation techniques on the thermal performance of flip chip heat spreaders. Electroless nickel plating is used as a plating technique as it can form a uniform thickness of nickel layer onto the copper substrate. Catalytic activation process needs to be done first to deposit some nickel atom onto copper substrate, so that the deposited nickel is able to catalyze the following reduction process. The two activation techniques investigated are galvanic initiation and thin nickel-copper strike. High temperature storage tests were ran to investigate the extent of intermetallic diffusion between the nickel and copper layers. Thermal diffusivity of these heat spreaders was studied using the Nano-flash apparatus. The results obtained showed that heat spreaders processed with thin nickel copper strike have lower thermal diffusivities (35-65 mm2 s -1) compared to those heat spreaders processed with galvanic-initiation (60-85 mm2 s-1). It is also discovered that the nickel-copper intermetallic layers of these heat spreaders grew thicker from 0.2 μm at initial time until 0.55 μm after high temperature storage of 168 hours. Nickelcopper intermetallic layers have lower thermal conductivity compared to pure copper, this further degrading the thermal diffusivity of these heat spreaders. As a conclusion, the galvanic initiation technique provides better thermal performance for heat spreaders used in semiconductor package.