Thermal 3D Magnetic Imaging of Advanced Packages

Advanced packages provide a flexible design platform for high-performance computing, at the cost of increased complexity. Thermal reliability is a critical metric in the design of new 2.5D and 3D microelectronics packages, but the current state-of-the-art requires testing to failure or full thermal test chip fabrication, which generally makes advanced packaging development more expensive and less US-friendly. We have developed magnetic nanoparticle technology that can remotely image temperature through millimeters of material. Recently, we have made significant advances toward applying this technology to accurately image temperature and heat-flow in commercial packaging materials and in proxy advanced packages, without the need for de-processing, which will provide the semiconductor industry with thermal data to aid in failure analysis and comparison against simulations.