Thermal analysis of a novel fan-out packaging structure optimized with graphene

Abstract Heat dissipation is regarded as one of the most critical issues in high-density fine-pitch fan-out packages. Copper is utilized in the redistribution layer (RDL) for signal transmission and thermal dissipation, however, optimal heat transfer is not consistently achieved. Due to the superior thermal conductivity of graphene, a composite structure of ‘graphene & copper’ for the RDL was proposed. We constructed a model of the Fan-out package with the composite RDL, which was simplified based on the principle of materials equivalence. The model was validated through finite-element simulation, thereby was adopted for evaluating the thermal performance of the Fan-out packages. The results revealed that the average temperature was reduced by 1.6% compared with that of the conventional structure. The integration of graphene improves the heat dissipation in the package. The most significant factors affecting the maximum temperature are the inclusion of the graphene layer and the package/chip ratio (P/C). Therefore, the composite structure of RDL is effective for solving the problem of heat dissipation in electronic devices.