Semicon Taiwan: TRUMPF Enables Integrated Chip Cooling for the Next Generation of AI Chips

AI Boom drives demand for new cooling concepts

Manufacturers are increasingly turning to advanced packaging, a cutting-edge semiconductor technology in which chips are stacked or closely interconnected to enable greater computing power in a small space. As a result, heat is increasingly generated inside the chip stack and can only be dissipated to a limited extent using conventional cooling methods, such as cooling server racks or entire data centers. Leading semiconductor manufacturers have therefore included novel cooling solutions for chips in their development roadmaps, such as microfluidic cooling or heat spreaders. This involves incorporating extremely fine structures into the chip package that dissipate heat where it is generated.

Semiconductor manufacturers must integrate these cooling structures into materials such as silicon carbide. This material is suitable for demanding applications in the semiconductor industry and efficiently dissipates heat. However, manufacturing the required microstructures poses major challenges for the semiconductor industry, as silicon carbide is extremely hard, the required structures are extremely small, and they are difficult to produce using established etching processes.

TRUMPF lasers enable industrial production of cooling structures

This is where TRUMPF’s ultrashort-pulse lasers (USP) come into play. “The key advantage of our technology: It is the combination of high laser power, beam-shaping technology, and our many years of application expertise that makes the industrial production of integrated cooling systems in chip stacks possible,” says Conrad.

The USP lasers ablate the silicon carbide with micrometer precision and create the fine structures. High precision is crucial for reliable cooling. Compared to etching, ultrashort-pulse lasers enable at least five times the processing speed while delivering excellent surface quality and precise geometry of the cooling structures. This allows the semiconductor industry’s requirements for both quality and cost-effectiveness to be met simultaneously. After all, in addition to quality, productivity plays a central role for chip manufacturers.

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