A novel steady-state method for measuring thermal conductivity of thermal interface materials with miniaturized thermal test chips

Thermal interface materials (TIMs) are widely used in electronic device packaging, and accurate characterization of their thermal properties is essential. However, existing TIM test platforms suffer from large size and inconsistency between copper-based test platforms and packaged silicon materials. To address these issues, this study proposes a method based on a miniaturized testing platform constructed using silicon-based thermal test chips (TTC). The thermal conductivity of several specimens was measured using steady-state heat source thermal transmission. The total thermal resistance, thermal contact resistance and thermal conductivity of several TIMs were evaluated through theoretical analysis and experimental verification. The thermal conductivity of several TIMs was tested using the proposed Back-to-Face and Back-to-Back TTC modules. The results demonstrate that this method exhibits high accuracy and can be used to characterize a wide range of TIMs.