Thermo-Mechanical Topology Optimization of 3D Heat Guiding Structures for Electronics Packaging

Heterogeneous and complex electronic packages may require unique thermo-mechanical structures to provide optimal heat guiding. In particular, when a heat source and a heat sink are not aligned, conventional thermal management methods providing uniform heat dissipation may not be appropriate. Here we present a topology optimization method to find thermally conductive and mechanically stable structures for optimal heat guiding under various heat source-sink arrangements. To exploit the capabilities, we consider complex heat guiding scenarios and 3D serpentine structures to carry the heat with corner angles ranging from 30° to 90°. While the thermal objective function is defined to minimize the temperature gradient, the mechanical objective function is defined to maximize the stiffness with a volume constraint. Our simulations show that the optimized structures can have a thermal resistance of less than 32% and stiffness greater than 43% compared to reference structures with no topology optimization at an identical volume fraction. The significant difference in thermal resistance is attributed to a thermally dead volume near the sharp corners. As a proof-of-concept experiment, we have created 3D heat guiding structures using a selective laser melting technique and characterized their thermal properties using an infrared thermography technique. The experiment shows the thermal resistance of the thermally optimized structure is 29% less than that of the reference structure. These results present unique capabilities of topology optimization and 3D manufacturing in enabling optimal heat guiding for heterogeneous systems and advancing the state-of-the-art in electronics packaging.