Determination of Thermal Conductivities for Thin-Film Materials in CMOS MEMS Process

The determination of thermal conductivities for complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) thin-film materials is very important as the operation and failure of integrated circuits (ICs) and CMOS microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices are most likely limited by thermal issues, that is, heat transfer. In this article, we present four micro thermal conductivity measurement ( μ TCM) devices for silicon oxide, polysilicon, and aluminum thin films using CMOS MEMS technology. To determine the thermal conductivities of those thin-film materials from the μ TCM devices, a linear thermal resistance model was proposed and validated by the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study, which showed an error of less than 5.5%. The thermal conductivities of thin-film materials were then measured over a temperature range of 210-362 K, while the measured results for silicon oxide, polysilicon, and aluminum at room temperature were 1.32, 21.22, and 70.2 W/mK, respectively. Those measured thermal conductivities were significantly smaller than the available bulk values. The discrepancies between the thin film and bulk materials are consistent with the reported data and trends, which reveals the importance of determining the thermal conductivities for thin-film materials in the CMOS MEMS process.