This article introduces an online condition monitoring strategy that utilizes a transient heat pulse to detect package thermal performance degradation. The metric employed is the temperature-dependent transient thermal impedance "Zth(t, Tamb)."The proposed methodology offers quantitative insights into package thermal performance degradation and effectively pinpoints the presence of multiple failure mechanisms. A thermal test chip assembled in a power quad flat no-lead package is used in this study to demonstrate the methodology. The packaged devices are first characterized to determine the transient pulse duration, a critical parameter to monitor a specific region of interest. Subsequently, package thermal performance degradation is continuously monitored online during thermomechanical cycling lifetime experiments. The validity of the measurement results is later confirmed through acoustic imaging and cross-sectional analysis. The changes observed in Zth(t, Tamb) over thermal cycling correspond to the delamination of the active metal layers on the die and cohesive failure on the die attach. This article further includes a comparative summary, highlighting the distinctions between the proposed and industry-standard test methods. In conclusion, the importance of online condition monitoring to detect early signs of failure is emphasized, and the proposed methodology s practical applicability in real-life scenarios is briefly discussed.

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Integrated Circuits and Electronic Modules experience concentrated thermal hot spots, which require advanced thermal solutions for effective distribution and dissipation of heat. The superior thermal properties of diamonds are long known, and it is an ideal material for heat-spreading applications. However, growing diamond films to the electronic substrate require complex processing at high temperatures. This research investigates a heterogeneous method of integrating diamond heat spreaders during the back-end packaging process. The semiconductor substrate and the heat spreader thicknesses were optimized based on simulations to realize a thermally enhanced Power Quad-Flat No-Lead package. The performance of the thermally enhanced PQFN was assessed by monitoring the temperature distribution across the active device surface and compared to a standard PQFN (without a heat spreader). Firstly, the thermally enhanced PQFN indicated a 9.6% reduction in junction temperature for an input power of 6.6W with a reduced thermal gradient on the active device surface. Furthermore, the diamond heat spreader's efficiency was observed to increase with increasing power input. Besides, the reliability of the thermally enhanced PQFN was tested by thermal cycling from -55°C to 150°C, which resulted in less than 2% thermal degradation over two-hundred cycles. Such choreographed thermal solutions are proven to enhance the packaged device's performance, and the superior thermal properties of the diamond are beneficial to suffice the increasing demand for high power.

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Background: Optogenetics could offer a solution to the current lack of an ambulatory method for the rapid automated cardioversion of atrial fibrillation (AF), but key translational aspects remain to be studied. Objective: To investigate whether optogenetic cardioversion of AF is effective in the aged heart and whether sufficient light penetrates the human atrial wall. Methods: Atria of adult and aged rats were optogenetically modified to express light-gated ion channels (i.e., red-activatable channelrhodopsin), followed by AF induction and atrial illumination to determine the effectivity of optogenetic cardioversion. The irradiance level was determined by light transmittance measurements on human atrial tissue. Results: AF could be effectively terminated in the remodeled atria of aged rats (97%, n = 6). Subsequently, ex vivo experiments using human atrial auricles demonstrated that 565-nm light pulses at an intensity of 25 mW/mm² achieved the complete penetration of the atrial wall. Applying such irradiation onto the chest of adult rats resulted in transthoracic atrial illumination as evidenced by the optogenetic cardioversion of AF (90%, n = 4). Conclusion: Transthoracic optogenetic cardioversion of AF is effective in the aged rat heart using irradiation levels compatible with human atrial transmural light penetration.

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SnBiAgCu solder alloy is an attractive soldering material for temperature-sensitive electronic devices due to its excellent creep properties. This study firstly reports the creep properties of SnBiAgCu solder alloy under different temperatures. Results show that the addition of Bi resulted in better creep resistance compared with that of commercial SAC305 (Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu). Secondly, dynamic mechanical analyses were performed to get the storage modulus and glass transition temperature of potting compounds. Finally, a finite element modeling based analysis were used to figure out the different failure mechanism due to the presence of potting materials. The accurate simulation data offers an optimization reference for the selection of solder and potting materials.

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Resin-reinforced silver (Ag) sintering material is an effective and highly reliable solution for power electronics packaging. The hybrid material’s process parameters strongly influence its microstructure and pose a significant challenge in estimating its effective properties as a thin interconnect layer. This research demonstrates a novel 3D reconstruction methodology for the microstructural investigation of the resin-reinforced Ag sintering material from OverMolded Plastic (OMP) packages. Based on the reconstructed models with different sintering parameters (temperature and time), the fraction of Ag and Resin volume distribution, the connectivity of silver particles, and the tortuosity factors were estimated. A 99% connectivity of sintered Ag particles was achieved with various sintering conditions, such as 200°C for 2 hours, 200°C for 4 hours, and 250°C for 2 hours. However, coarsening of Ag particles was promoted when sintered at 250°C. Increasing the sintering time at 200°C had insignificant changes. The estimated tortuosity factor also indicated that sintering at 250°C provides the shortest heat transport path between the semiconductor die and the package substrate. In order to quantify the microstructural findings, the OMP packages’ thermal performance with different sintering conditions (temperature, time, and interconnect thickness) was experimentally assessed. Although the experimental measurements were less sensitive to the effective interface thermal resistances’, the measurement results show a good correlation with the microstructural analysis. Sintering the Resin-reinforced Ag sintering material at higher temperatures (250°C) seems to improve the package thermal performance, and increasing the sintering time at 200°C has a negligible effect.@en

In this paper, stability and mechanistic simulations for a four-beam-mass-based MEMS gravimeter were conducted, and guidelines for the gravimeter design were proposed. Based on a prototyped MEMS device, the nonlinear finite element model was validated first against the experimental results. Then, we demonstrated three different scenarios in design that have three distinct modes of deformation: the mode with buckling (case 1), the mode without buckling but with a single zero-stiffness point (case 2), and the mode without both buckling and zero-stiffness point (case 3). Both case 1 and case 2 presented an unstable and sensitive region, in which a tiny perturbation could result in a rapid increase of the resonance frequency. Case 3, on the other hand, could provide a stable and low resonance frequency with a linear relationship between the displacement and gravitational acceleration. An optimized design of a beam/spring-mass-based relative gravimeter could be achieved using the above guidelines.

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AIMS: Ventricular tachyarrhythmias (VTs) are common in the pathologically remodelled heart. These arrhythmias can be lethal, necessitating acute treatment like electrical cardioversion to restore normal rhythm. Recently, it has been proposed that cardioversion may also be realized via optically controlled generation of bioelectricity by the arrhythmic heart itself through optogenetics and therefore without the need of traumatizing high-voltage shocks. However, crucial mechanistic and translational aspects of this strategy have remained largely unaddressed. Therefore, we investigated optogenetic termination of VTs (i) in the pathologically remodelled heart using an (ii) implantable multi-LED device for (iii) in vivo closed-chest, local illumination. METHODS AND RESULTS: In order to mimic a clinically relevant sequence of events, transverse aortic constriction (TAC) was applied to adult male Wistar rats before optogenetic modification. This modification took place 3 weeks later by intravenous delivery of adeno-associated virus vectors encoding red-activatable channelrhodopsin or Citrine for control experiments. At 8-10 weeks after TAC, VTs were induced ex vivo and in vivo, followed by programmed local illumination of the ventricular apex by a custom-made implanted multi-LED device. This resulted in effective and repetitive VT termination in the remodelled adult rat heart after optogenetic modification, leading to sustained restoration of sinus rhythm in the intact animal. Mechanistically, studies on the single cell and tissue level revealed collectively that, despite the cardiac remodelling, there were no significant differences in bioelectricity generation and subsequent transmembrane voltage responses between diseased and control animals, thereby providing insight into the observed robustness of optogenetic VT termination. CONCLUSION: Our results show that implant-based optical cardioversion of VTs is feasible in the pathologically remodelled heart in vivo after local optogenetic targeting because of preserved optical control over bioelectricity generation. These findings add novel mechanistic and translational insight into optical ventricular cardioversion.

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High-performance IC-to-antenna interconnection is one of the key enablers for the mass production of high-end millimeter wave (mmW) radar systems above 100 GHz. In this work, a radar system with an on-package antenna array working at 122 GHz is presented. The antenna is placed on top of the molded package and the antenna-to-chip interconnection is realized by through-polymer via (TPV) technology. The detailed fabrication process of the radar antenna-in-package (AiP) with TPV is discussed. The results from the functional tests of the radar AiP are presented and benchmarked to a commercial quad-flat no-leads (QFN) package with an open antenna cavity. The detection margin between the echo signal and the constant false alarm rate (CFAR) threshold is approximately 10 dB higher for the TPV radar AiP compared with the benchmarked commercial QFN package.@en

In this paper, the compressive stress of pristine and coated vertically-aligned (VA) multi-walled (MW) carbon nanotube (CNT) pillars were investigated using flat-punch nano-indentation. VA-MWCNT pillars of various diameters (30–150 µm) grown by low-pressure chemical vapor deposition on silicon wafer. A conformal brittle coating of niobium-titanium-nitride with high superconductivity temperature was deposited on the VA-MWCNT pillars using atomic layer deposition. The coating together with the pillars could form a superconductive vertical interconnect. The indentation tests showed foam-like behavior of pristine CNTs and ceramic-like fracture of conformal coated CNTs. The compressive strength and the elastic modulus for pristine CNTs could be divided into three regimes of linear elastic, oscillatory plateau, and exponential densification. The elastic modulus of pristine CNTs increased for a smaller pillar diameter. The response of the coated VA-MWCNTs depended on the diffusion depth of the coating in the pillar and their elastic modulus increased with pillar diameter due to the higher sidewall area. Tuning the material properties by conformal coating on various diameter pillars enhanced the mechanical performance and the vertical interconnect access (via) reliability. The results could be useful for quantum computing applications that require high-density superconducting vertical interconnects and reliable operation at reduced temperatures.@en

The high aspect ratio and the porous nature of spatially oriented forest-like carbon nanotube (CNT) structures represent a unique opportunity to engineer a novel class of nanoscale assemblies. By combining CNTs and conformal coatings, a 3D lightweight scaffold with tailored behavior can be achieved. The effect of nanoscale coatings, aluminum oxide (Al2O3) and nonstoichiometric amorphous silicon carbide (a-SiC), on the thermal transport efficiency of high aspect ratio vertically aligned CNTs, is reported herein. The thermal performance of the CNT-based nanostructure strongly depends on the achieved porosity, the coating material and its infiltration within the nanotube network. An unprecedented enhancement in terms of effective thermal conductivity in a-SiC coated CNTs has been obtained: 181% compared to the as-grown CNTs and Al2O3 coated CNTs. Furthermore, the integration of coated high aspect ratio CNTs in an epoxy molding compound demonstrates that, next to the required thermal conductivity, the mechanical compliance for thermal interface applications can also be achieved through coating infiltration into foam-like CNT forests.@en

This work describes the design, modelling and realisation of the mechanical part of a non-linear MEMS accelerometer intended for large displacement behaviour. For this, a mass/spring system was designed with an extremely low resonance frequency. In this work the mechanical behaviour was verified by measurements done using an optical setup, including a laser and photodiode. The results are a resonance frequency of 12.6 Hz, which can be further tuned depending on the application by varying the mass, beam thickness and tilt of the structure. This results in a mechanical sensitivity of 0.16 [mm/ms-2]. The future goal of this work is to integrate a read-out scheme on wafer level, for example electrostatically.@en

The mechanical part of inertial sensors can be designed to have a large mechanical sensitivity, but also requires the transduction mechanism which translates this displacement. The overall system resolution in mechanical inertial sensors is dictated by the noise contribution of each stage and the magnitude of each sensitivity, see also Figure 1. Maximizing the capacitive sensitivity, results in suppression of noise in the electronics domain. This work focuses on the design and realization of a mechanical to electrical transduction using a capacitive readout scheme. Design considerations and measures are taken to maximize the latter are considered and illustrated using FEM simulations. A capacitive transducer showing a sensitivity of 100 [aF/nm] was designed and realized, by exploiting the large displacement behavior of the inertial sensor which was considered.@en

We explore a methodology for patterned copper nanoparticle paste for 3D interconnect applications in wafer to wafer (W2W) bonding. A novel fine pitch thermal compression bonding process (sintering) with coated copper nanoparticle paste was developed. Most of the particle size is between 10-30 nm. Lithographically defined stencil printing using photoresist and lift-off was used to apply and pattern the paste. Variations in sintering process parameters, such as: pressure, geometry and ambient atmosphere, were studied. Compared to Sn-Ag-Cu (SAC) microsolder bumps, we achieved better interconnect resistivity after sintering at 260 °C for 10 min, in a 700 mBar hydrogen forming gas (H2/N2) environment. The electrical resistivity was 7.84 ± 1.45 μΩ·cm, which is about 4.6 times that of bulk copper. In addition, metallic nanoparticle interconnect porosity can influence the electrical properties of the interconnect. Consequently, we investigated the porosity effect on conductivity using finite element simulation. A linear relationship between the equivalent conductivity and particle overlapping ratio was found.@en

This paper presents a tuneable binary amplitude Fresnel lens produced by wafer-level microfabrication. The Fresnel lens is fabricated by encapsulating lithographically defined vertically aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) bundles inside a polydimethyl-siloxane (PDMS) layer. The composite lens material combines the excellent optical absorption properties of the CNT with the transparency and stretchability of the PDMS. By stretching the elastomeric composite in radial direction, the lens focal length is tuned. Good focusing response is demonstrated and a large focus change (≥24%) was achieved by stretching lenses up to 11.4%.@en

Miniaturization of clustered high power LEDs by direct molded optics is an upcoming development. This paper discusses the transfer molding process of high aspect ratio optical domes for high brightness multi-LED packages. The fabrication process is separated in three subjects; First mold-cavity manufacturing techniques are discussed. Secondly the mechanics of the hyper-elastic release foils are characterized and analyzed using finite element analysis. Thirdly, silicone flow behavior is characterized for the optimization of the silicone injection parameters and package design. Finally the results are combined to produce an operational demonstrator containing 45 domes, with a height of 7 mm, molded directly on a single board containing LEDs.@en