Catastrophic Semiconductor Manufacturing Cold Plate Field Failures Solved with an Innovative Redesign and Precision Manufacturing

Case Study

Application & Industry

Design a Thermal Management Device to insure that a reliable fabrication process will yield cool plates that eliminate catastrophic field failures in semiconductor capital equipment.

Challenges

The customer approached us to solve a quality and process problem resulting in catastrophic failures of cool plates in the field. The plates were exploding in a vacuum process environment causing equipment as well as product damage and machine downtime. Internal gas expansion was causing the cool plates to delaminate during the critical process phase.

Solutions

Precision machining was required to fabricate a tightly toleranced and flat cool plate base. Copper coils are installed in the cavity which facilitate the flow of cooling affluent. A thermally conductive compound is poured into the cavity in such a way as to eliminate any air pockets thus eliminating thermal expansion during the semiconductor process.