Preferred Thermal Dissipation Solution for Chip Packaging: Engineering Application of Diamond-Copper Composite Materials

Diamond is the material with the highest thermal conductivity among known natural substances, boasting a unique physical structure and heat transfer mechanism. Both single-crystal diamond grown via heteroepitaxy and homoepitaxy through the MPCVD method, and wafer-grade diamond prepared by chemical vapor deposition (CVD), possess superior physicochemical properties and serve as crucial materials in multiple fields such as thermology, optics and electronics.

In addition to pure CVD diamond, diamond-based composite materials—a new type of functional materials—are fabricated by compounding diamond with copper, silicon carbide and other substrates. These composites integrate the ultra-high thermal conductivity of diamond with the advantages of the substrates including easy processability, high toughness and low cost, ultimately forming transitional and mainstream thermal dissipation solutions that balance performance and engineering practicality.

Diamond-Copper Composite Materials

Endowed with high thermal conductivity and a thermal expansion coefficient matching that of chips, diamond-copper composite materials are the ideal heat sink materials for addressing the thermal dissipation challenges of high-power chips at present. The core application solutions are as follows:

1. High-integration microchannel heat dissipation: Integrating diamond-copper substrates with precision copper microchannels, where cooling liquid removes heat directly through the microchannels.

2. Transition heat sink for high-power chips: Acting as a transition layer between chips and conventional heat sinks to alleviate thermal stress.

3. Liquid cooling/phase change heat dissipation structure: Being directly used as liquid cooling cold plates attached to chips, or combined with the vapor chamber technology.

Application in Chip Packaging

Diamond-copper composite materials are usually fabricated into ultra-thin heat dissipation sheets, which are directly attached to the front or back surface of chips. Leveraging the complementary advantages of the two composite components, the materials can rapidly spread the temperature of local hot spots inside chips to a larger area and prevent overheating of the hot spots. In practical electronic packaging design, diamond-copper composite materials are mainly applied in three positions: heat sink sheets under chips, package lids, and electrically insulating heat dissipation substrates, to meet the diverse requirements of chip packaging.

Huazun Semiconductor, a national high-tech enterprise specialized in the R&D, production and sales of wide bandgap semiconductor materials, is committed to providing customers at home and abroad with various types and functional diamond products, as well as high-standard and high-quality diamond-copper composite materials, helping to solve tough problems in high-end technological fields such as chip packaging and thermal dissipation.