The increasing of power and processing speed and miniaturization of central processor unit (CPU) used in electronics equipment requires better performing thermal management systems. A typical thermal management package consists of thermal interfaces, heat dissipaters, and external cooling systems. There have been a number of experimental techniques and procedures for estimating thermal conductivity of thin, compressible thermal interface material (TIM). The TIM performance is affected by many factors and thus TIM should be evaluated under specified application conditions. In compact packaging of electronic equipment the chip is interfaced with a thin heat spreader. As the package is made thinner, the coupling between heat flow through TIM and that in the heat spreader becomes stronger. Thus, a TIM characterization system for considering the heat spreader effect is proposed and demonstrated in detail in this paper. The TIM test apparatus developed based on ASTM D-5470 standard for thermal interface resistance measurement of high performance TIM, including the precise measurement of changes in in-situ materials thickness. Thermal impedances are measured and compared for different directions of heat dissipation. The measurement of the TIM under the practical conditions can thus be used as the thermal criteria for the TIM selection.
