Integrated Circuits and Thermal Issues: A Primer

As the United States Air Force (USAF) in addition to the rest of DoD and American society become increasingly dependent on smaller, faster, cheaper, higher-performing integrated circuits (IC), digital, technologies that have more functionality, we must not overlook the fact that better-performance does not come without its price. In this paper, we discuss the integrated circuit; solid-state and IC history; IC functionality; IC manufacturing process; and silicon and silicon dioxide heat transfer rates. We discuss customized ICs such as Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), and Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS). We discuss the Fourier heat equation. We discuss how increasing the numbers of transistors and their support components increases the density relating to the interior of such semiconductor materials. We discuss the purposes of reducing size and weight of an overall system; that the reduction of IC exterior dimension along with an ever increasing need to increase the interior numbers of components and their support mechanisms for performing ever more functions increases internal heat. We discuss how this trend could lead to the generation of higher internal IC temperatures as well as indeterminate states of IC functionalities. We discuss traditional and non-traditional solutions for removing IC heat.