Cold Spray: A Disruptive Technology for Enabling Novel Packaging Thermomechanical Solutions

This paper presents cold spray as a nascent semiconductor packaging capability with promising thermomechanical applications. Cold spray enables fast, low temperature, solid-state additive manufacturing of die backside coatings with near-bulk properties and low contact resistances. With appropriate process and material optimization, those coatings can reduce package warpage at reflow temperatures and improve heat spreading from die hotspots, enabling higher processor power and performance. Experiments and simulations are presented which demonstrate the advantages of the proposed die backside cold spray architecture and the breakthrough capabilities of the cold spray process itself, positioning cold spray as a powerful new packaging tool with far-reaching potential.