A novel heat dissipation structure with embedded both through silicon vias and micro-channels for improving heat transfer performance of 3-D integrated circuits

This paper proposed a new heat dissipation structure with embedded both through silicon vias (TSV) and micro-channels to solve the complex heat problems of 3-D integrated circuits (3-D-IC). The COMSOL simulation model is established to investigate the characteristIC of steady-state response for the defined four cases. The simulation results show that our proposed heat dissipation structure (i.e., Case 4: 3-D-IC with embedded both TSV and micro-channels) can reduce steady-state temperature over 43.546%, 18.440%, and 12.338% in comparison Case 1 (i.e., 3-D-IC without embedded heat dissipation structure), Case 2 (i.e., 3-D-IC with only inserted TSV), and Case 3 (i.e., 3-D-IC with only embedded micro-channels), respectively. Besides, it is demonstrated that CNT as filler material of TSV and CNT nanofluid as coolant of micro-channels (i.e., the proposed Scheme 4) can further reduce steady-state temperature of 3D-IC with embedded our proposed heat dissipation structure. The corresponding results illustrated that the steady-state temperature of Scheme 4 is reduced by 13.767% as compared with Scheme 1 (i.e., the conventional Cu as filler material of TSV and water as coolant of micro-channels). Moreover, it is manifested that the heat transfer performance of 3-D-IC with embedded the proposed heat dissipation structure can be enhanced by the increase of TSV radius and flow rate of coolant of micro-channels. Therefore, our proposed heat dissipation structure has great prospect for enhancing heat transfer performance of 3-D-IC.