Cu-Diamond Composite Thermal Vias Hit 514 W/mK for 2.5D/3D Chip Cooling
jwt0625 · x · 2026-10-20
A shared paper (Yang 2026) proposes embedding TiC-coated diamond particles into electroplated copper thermal vias at the interposer level to cool 2.5D/3D chip packages.
Key points:
- Hasselman–Johnson modeling shows an effective thermal conductivity up to 514 W/mK in the valid particle-size window (9.1–20μm, geometrically capped at Dvia/5 = 20μm), well above pure copper's 400 W/mK.
- Fabrication flow: borosilicate cleaning → laser modification → chemical etching of vias → electroless Cu plating on diamond powder → two rounds of particle insertion with diamond-via bridge formation → dual-sided Cu electroplating.
- SEM/EDS imaging confirms diamond particles dispersed within the copper vias.
The poster also muses about carbon's return to chips: graphene transistors and diamond die/interposer/substrate materials.
Related event: Diamond-Embedded Copper Vias Boost Advanced Packaging Thermal Performance(2 posts)→
More from Infra
- Stop button often doesn't stop the LLM: tokens keep generating unless the app hangs up — No-Peanut-6988 · 2026-10-20
- ComfyUI hits 140k stars: text-to-image generation now runs on your own GPU — alex_verem · 2026-10-20
- Immich at 116k stars: face search across your photo library without Google — alex_verem · 2026-10-20
- whisper.cpp at 54k stars: hours of offline transcription on a normal laptop — alex_verem · 2026-10-20
- Five AI tasks that needed a data center in 2020 now run at home in 2026 — alex_verem · 2026-10-20
- Marvell photonics module puts HBM memory 50 meters from the GPU at sub-microsecond latency — rohanpaul_ai · 2026-10-20