Thermal simulation of flexible LED package enhanced with copper pillars

Chip on flexible substrate (COF) is a new packaging technology for light emitting diodes (LED). This paper investigated the effect of Cu-pillar in the polyimide (PI) layer on the thermal properties of COF LED packages by finite element analysis. The thermal distribution and thermal resistance were studied in both COF LED packages with and without Cu-pillar. The PI layer showed the highest thermal resistance in the typical package and led to a high chip temperature. With the addition of Cu-pillars, however, the thermal resistance of the PI layer significantly decreased due to the improvement of vertical thermal dissipation under LED chips. Based on the results of simulation and calculation, the relationship between the amount of Cu-pillar and thermal resistance of the COF package has been built. For the packages studied in this research, an 8 × 8 Cu-pillars array was adequate to improve the thermal performance of COF packages.