23rd International Symposium on Transport Phenomena
Auckland, New Zealand
1922 November 2012
Optimal Design of Thermal Management System in a LED Package
M.W. Jeong1, Y. Jang2, J. Heo2, H. Kang2 and Y. Kim2
1
Graduate school of Mechanical Engineering
Korea University, Seoul 136-713, Korea
2
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Korea University, Seoul 136-713, Korea
Abstract
LEDs (Light emitting diodes) are a powerful light source because
of high energy efficiency, long life, and eco-friendliness. Most of
the electricity in a LED becomes heat rather than light. If this
heat is not removed, the LEDs run at a high temperature, which
not only lowers their efficiency, but also makes the LED less
reliable. Therefore, the thermal characteristic of the LED package
should be carefully considered in the design process because the
heat generated from junction degrades reliability and efficiency
of the LEDs. In this study, the effect of heat spreading was
studied with the variation of geometrical design parameter using
a commercial CFD (computational fluid dynamics) program. An
effect of the thermal modeling of the LED model was evaluated
with the variation of the thickness of a board. In addition, thermal
characteristics were studied for the composition of a material
layer of a board. In thermal design, the variation of thermal
performance with the variation of the thickness had different
tendencies between in thermal modeling with TIM and without
TIM. The reasonable tendency was observed in the thermal
model with TIM because the effect of heat spreading was
included. The effect of heat spreading was varied by the
composition of layers in the board.
Nomenclature
k thermal conductivity [W/mK]
Q heat transfer rate [W]
R thermal resistance [K/W]
T temperature [oC]
t thickness [-]
angle of heat spreading through material [o]
Subscripts
a air
avg average
b board
D.A. die attach
H high
j junction
L low
s spreading
z z-direction
Introduction
LEDs draw strong attention as a next generation light source.
LEDs have a tenth energy consumption and 50 times life time
comparing with an incandescent lamp, and 10 times life time
comparing with a fluorescent lamp [3, 5]. Therefore, LEDs have
a powerful light source because of high energy efficiency, long
life, and eco-friendliness. Recently, LEDs have been used in
various fields as a light source. Heat dissipation is being more
and more important in LEDs because of increasing light output
and integration. Generally, it is known that only about 15 to 20%
of input power is converted into light, and the remaining 80 to
85% is converted into heat. Life time of a LED decreases from
40,000 to 20,000 hours when junction temperature increases from
40 to 50oC [3]. Also, heat generated from LEDs can cause a
critical failure due to difference of thermal expansion coefficient
in the materials and degradation of light output by changing
colors in package and lens [5]. Park et al. (2004) studied about
the effect of junction temperature on the performance of a LED.
They reported that the LED efficiency decreased by 70% at the
junction temperature of 85oC [2]. Therefore, thermal
characteristics of LEDs should be carefully considered in the
design process for efficiency and reliability. In addition, thermal
spreading is an important factor to be considered in thermal
design [1]. Thermal resistance is composed of Rz (z-direction
resistance; vertical direction) and Rs (spreading resistance;
horizontal direction). The was the lowest thermal resistance at the
thickness of 0.6 mm due to the effect of heat spreading, when the
thickness of Cu substrate is varied in a multi-chip LED [4].
In this study, the heat spreading characteristics of LEDs were
studied with the variation of geometrical design parameters. The
effect of the thermal modeling in LEDs was evaluated with the
variation of the thickness of a board. In addition, thermal
characteristics were studied for the composition of layers in a
board. The thermal performance of a LED package model was
analyzed using a commercial CFD program.
Thermal Modeling
Figure 1 shows the model structure in analysis. The working fluid
is air. The ambient air temperature is 25oC and the air is assumed
to be incompressible ideal gas. LED chips are on the board in air
surrounding. The size of air surrounding is 232310 mm3 to
consider the experimental condition. The bottom of surrounding
is at isothermal condition whose temperature is 25oC.
Gravitational acceleration is -9.81 m/s2 in the z-direction
considering natural convection.
Figure 1. Schematic of thermal modeling.
 Thermal conductivity
Material
(W/m K)
Chip 46
Die bonding (AuSn) 57
Dielectric layer 2
Board (Aluminum) 140
TIM
0.6
(Thermal interface material)
Table 1. The thermal conductivity of materials in LED package
The temperature of the LED model was solved by a CFD tool
with the FVM (finite volume method). The used CFD tool was
the commercial CFD program, Ansys Icepak 13.0. Mesh quality
was satisfied to be over 0.5. The number of elements was about
1,945,000. The time variation was steady state. The convergence
during solving was investigated to consider the residuals and to
monitor the maximum chip temperature.
Model to Change the Board Thickness
Figure 2 shows a schematic of the LED model. The LED package
is a COB (chip on board) type. There are 4 chips on the board.
The size of the chip is 1.01.00.1 mm3. The heat generation is
1.68 W per a chip. Chips are attached on the board by die
attaching (AuSn). The thickness of the die attaching is 0.02 mm.
The board consists of a dielectric layer and aluminum base plate.
The dielectric layer is anodizing oxide layer. The size of the
dielectric layer is 16.0017.000.01 mm3. The thickness of TIM
(thermal interface material) is 0.23 mm. Table 1 shows the
thermal conductivities of materials used in the LED package.
Model to Change the Structure of the Board
Figure 3 shows a schematic of the layer structure in the board. As
shown in Fig. 3(b), two types are considered in this study. The
first case is named as kH-kL, which consists of chip-kH and -kL
layers in order. The second case is named as kL-kH, which is
composed of chip-kL and -kH layers in order. Thermal
conductivities of kL and kH layers are 20.24 W/mK and 202.40
W/mK, respectively. The heat generation from the chip is 3 W.
The thicknesses of kL and kH layers are 0.2 mm and 1 mm,
respectively.
Result and Discussion
Effects of Modeling Method and Thermal Boundary Condition
The boundary condition and modeling method are important for
the numerical analysis using CFD.
Figure 2. Schematic of the LEDs: (a) Exterior of the LED
package (b) Structure of the LED package.
Figure 3. Schematic of the layer structure in the board: (a) Base
model of the layer structure, (b) Two types in composition of the
layer.
Heat spreading is not a trivial issue on thermal problem of a LED
including micro scale heat transfer [1]. In this study, we
attempted to investigate the effects of the modeling method when
analyzing thermal characteristics of the LED packages with
various geometries.
Two cases of the LED model compared: one is the thermal model
without TIM and the other is the thermal model with TIM. The
uniform temperature of 25oC was fixed on the bottom of the
board in the thermal model without TIM and on the bottom of
TIM in the thermal model with TIM. Figure 4 compares the
junction temperatures in the thermal model without TIM with
that in the thermal model with TIM according to the increase in
the thickness of the board from 0.21 to 2.10 mm. In the thermal
model without TIM, the junction temperature increased from
36.5 to 41.8oC with the increase in the board thickness. In the
thermal model with TIM, the junction temperature decreased
from 87.8 to 59.0oC with the increase in the board thickness. The
junction temperature in the thermal model with TIM was 51.3 to
17.2oC higher than that in the thermal model without TIM at the
thickness of the board from 0.21 to 2.10 mm. The junction
temperature increased in the thermal model without TIM and
decreased in the thermal model with TIM according to the
thickness of the board. This is due to the effect of heat spreading.
Figures 5 and 6 show temperature distributions of the thermal
model without TIM and with TIM, respectively. As shown in
Figure 6, the high temperature region was expanded from the
center to side on the surface of the board with the increase in the
TIM thickness because of the decrease in the junction
temperature. However, as shown in Figure 5 for the thermal
model without TIM, the spreading of the high temperature region
restricted due to the increase in the thermal resistance with the
thickness of the board. The effect of heat spreading did not
appear in uniform temperature condition on the bottom of the
board when varying the thickness of the board. The high
temperature region became larger on the board surface with the
90 Junction temperature
Without TIM
80 WithTIM
Temperature (oC)
70
60
50 Tambient : 25oC
40
30
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5
Base(Al plate) thickness (mm)
Figure 4. Comparison of junction temperature according to the
thickness of the base.
 8
Rjb 90
7 85

Thermal resistance (oC/W)

Tj
6 80

Temperature (oC)
Tambient : 25oC 75
5 70
4 65
60
3
55
2 50
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Figure 5. Variation of temperature distribution with the variation Base plate thickness (mm)
of the thickness of the base in the thermal model without TIM.
Figure 7. Variation of thermal performance with the increase in
the thickness of the base in the board.

Rb Rz Rs
= + (3)
dt dt dt

Where Rb is the thermal resistance of the board, Rz is the vertical

Figure 6. Variation of temperature distribution with the variation
of the thickness of the base in the thermal model with TIM.
was increase in the board thickness from 0.21 to 2.10 mm in the
thermal model with TIM. It was consistent with the result that
heat spreading increased with the increase in the thickness of a
substrate in a specific thickness range [1,4]. Therefore, it is
required to consider the thermal model with TIM when
investigating the thermal performance of LEDs with the variation
of the board thickness.
Thermal Characteristics with a Thickness of Al Plate
Figure 7 shows the variation of thermal characteristics of a LED
package with the variation of base (Al plate) thickness. The
thermal resistance (Rjb) is calculated by equation (1).
T j Tb ,avg
R jb = (1)
Q
The junction temperature was from 89.8 to 58.3oC at the
thickness of Al base plate from 0.21 to 5.25 mm. The minimum
junction temperature was 58.2oC at the thickness of 4.20 mm The
thermal resistance from junction to board was from 7.32 to 2.71
K/W and the minimum value was 2.70 K/W at the thickness of
4.20 mm. However, the difference values of thermal performance
were very small after 2.10 mm. Therefore, the thermal
performance became almost constant after 2.10 mm within the
thermal resistance, Rs is the horizontal thermal resistance
(spreading resistance). Rz is l/kA and A is vertical area to
direction of heat transfer. Rs decreased, but Rz increased with the
increase in the thickness from 0.21 to 2.10 mm. In addition, Rb
decreased with the increase in the thickness from 0.21 to 2.10
mm. After 2.10 mm, the increase in Rz was consistent with the
decreasing in Rs.
Effect of Layer Composition in Board
Figure 8 compares junction temperatures by combination of the
layers. The board was composed of two layers The junction
temperatures were 74.5oC in the kH-kL and 101.7oC in the kL-kH.
The kH-kL showed 27.3oC higher junction temperature than the
kL-kH. The area of sink substrate was larger than that of heat
source. Therefore, heat spreading occurred when heat moved
from the heat source to the heat sink substrate. The effect of heat
spreading can investigate from the spreading angle. The
spreading angle was calculated by equation (4) [6].
k Layer 1
= tan 1 (4)
k Layer
2
The angles of heat spreading were 84.29o in kH-kL and 5.71o in
kL-kH. The wider angle of heat spreading indicates the better heat
spreading.
150
kH-kL Tambient : 25oC
kL-kH
Ttemperature (oC)

thickness from 0.21 mm to 5.25 mm. The thermal resistance at 100

the thickness of 2.10 mm decreased by 62.2% comparing with
that at 0.21 mm. The thermal resistance from the junction to
board can be expressed by equation (2).
50
R jb = Rchip + RD. A. + Rd + Rb (2)

In addition, the variation of the thermal resistance of the board 0

can be expressed as equation (3) by Yang et al. [4].
Figure 8. Comparison of junction temperature according to layer
composition in the board.
 L2
L1
chip
Layer1
Layer2
thickness of 2.10 mm. The effect of heat spreading was different
Figure 9. Cross-section of layout for thermal spreading in a board.
Figure 9 shows concepts of length of heat spreading, average
length of heat spreading, average cross-sectional area for the
effect of heat spreading. The length of heat spreading can be
calculated by equation (5). The average length of heat spreading
can be calculated by equation (6). The average cross-sectional
area by heat spreading effect can be calculated by equation (7)
[6].
L2 = 2t Layer1 tan ( ) + L1 (5)
L L
LLayer1,avg = 2 1 + L1 (6)
2 [2] Park, J., Shin, M.H., Lee, C.C., Measurement of
ALayer1 , avg = L2Layer1 , avg (7)
The average lengths of heat spreading were 11.00 mm in kH-kL
and 1.02 mm in kL-kH. The average cross-sectional areas of layer1
by heat spreading effect were 121.02 mm2 in kH-kL and 1.04 mm2
in kL-kH. The kH-kL would have the larger average cross-sectional
areas than the kL-kH because kH has higher thermal conductivity
than kL so that better heat spreading occurs in the kH. Therefore,
cross-sectional area of layer1 is dominant for heat transfer,
because the cross-sectional area increases continuously through
all layers. Under the limitation of design, to set the higher
thermal conductivity material close to heat source in PCB yielded
better thermal design.
Conclusions
In thermal design, the variation of thermal performance with the
variation of the thickness had the different tendency between in
the thermal modeling with TIM and without TIM. This is
important in thermal design of LEDs. The thermal model with
TIM showed more reasonable tendency because the effect of heat
spreading was considered. In the thickness of Al base from 0.21
to 5.25 mm, the thermal performance decreased before the
thickness of 2.10 mm and remained almost constant after the
by combination of the layers in the board. The angle of spreading
and average cross-sectional areas of layer1 became larger when
the layer of higher thermal conductivity was close to the heat
source.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the Korean Evaluation Institute
of Industrial Technology (Grant No. 10035530).
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