Performance and Manufacturing of Silicon-Based Vapor Chambers

This paper reviews recent progress in the development of silicon-based vapor chambers for heat spreading in electronic packages. Effective hotspot mitigation is an increasingly challenging issue in electronics thermal management, and the use of silicon vapor chambers creates opportunities for thermal-expansion matched, high performance heat spreaders that can be directly integrated with the semiconductor die. While silicon microheat pipes have been extensively studied as one-dimensional heat transport mechanisms for heat routing in semiconductor substrates, silicon vapor chambers require special consideration and different manufacturing approaches due to the different heat transport configurations involved. The following review therefore provides an overview on the evolution of silicon vapor chambers in terms of fabrication strategies and performance characterization. Particular focus is given to opportunities and challenges associated with using silicon as the vapor chamber envelope material rather than more traditional metal-based vapor chambers, such as the ability to optimize the wick geometry with greater fidelity and issues with manufacturing scalability.