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Article history: In this study, effects of the dimensions and the thermal conductivity of the substrate on the heat transfer
Received 14 February 2014 characteristics of a LED module are investigated. The total thermal resistance corresponding to a LED
Accepted 10 May 2014 module operating at different power levels is measured using a method following JESD51-1 and JESD51-
Available online 20 May 2014
14 standards. In addition, a finite element method (FEM) numerical simulation is carried out to analyze
the heat transfer phenomena in the LED module. It is found that, for the current experimental conditions,
Keywords:
the importance of the thermal spreading resistance effect increases with decreasing substrate thickness
LED
and/or increasing input power of the LED module, which corresponds to an increase in the total thermal
Electronic package heat transfer
Thermal resistance measurement
resistance and correspondingly a higher chip temperature. Experimental and numerical results show
Spreading resistance that the thermal spreading resistance and thus the chip temperature can be reduced by increasing the
substrate thickness or by utilizing materials with high lateral thermal conductivities (directionally-
dependent) for the substrate. In consequence, for LED modules with the same substrate thickness, using
graphite composite to replace aluminum as the substrate material reduces the spreading resistance by
nearly 14% in the current study.
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction LEDs in many countries [3]. However, the light emitted from LEDs
degrades over time [4e8]. Possible reasons contributing to the light
The development of light emitting diodes (LEDs) systems has degradation of LEDs include thermal-induced deterioration of the
received a lot of attention due to requirements for energy efficient encapsulation, die-attach [9], reflector and lead wires, as well as
lighting sources in a variety of applications worldwide. In addition impurities and crystalline defects [5,10,11]. The chip temperature
to high energy efficiency, LEDs also are preferred for their fast has a significant impact on these factors. In addition, nearly 80% of
response and low environmental impact [1,2]. The performance of the energy input to a LED can be dissipated as heat [12]. Thus,
LEDs in terms of light output quality has improved significantly and thermal management is critical to attain high efficient, high power
efforts have been made to replace traditional lighting sources with and long lasting LEDs [13e15].
Thermal management of a LED system includes two major
factors: packaging and system performance [16]. In addition to
* Corresponding author. the design and optimization of heat sinks such as fin arrays
E-mail address: mtlee@nchu.edu.tw (M.-T. Lee). [17e19] and single phase liquid cooling device [20], advanced
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2014.05.028
1359-4311/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
362 K.-S. Yang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 70 (2014) 361e368
Fig. 1. (a) Schematic of the experimental setup; (b) picture of the testing LED module.
presented in the JEDEC Standard Document (JESD51-14), technical directions, as shown in Fig. 1(b). Therefore, a quarter section is
references [36e40], and in our previously published work [32]. analyzed as shown in Fig. 3. As previously noted, the thermal
conductivity of the graphite composite utilized as the substrate is
3. Numerical analysis directionally-dependent; thus, the equation for the conservation of
energy is:
A numerical analysis for the thermal field was carried out to
assist in understanding the heat transfer phenomena in the high v vT v vT v vT 000
kx þ ky þ kz þ q_ ¼ 0 (2)
power LED module. The LED module is symmetrical in the x and y vx vx vy vy vz vz
364 K.-S. Yang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 70 (2014) 361e368
Table 1
Dimensions and materials of package layers of the testing LED module.
Thickness:1.6mm
3.0 Thickness:1.1mm
Thickness:0.9mm
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
10 20 30 40 50
Fig. 5. (a) Schematic of a heat spreader plate with a relatively small heat source placed in the center. (b) Heat flux plot (adiabats) of a heat source on a substrate with an aspect ratio
3 ¼ 1. (c) Heat flux plot of a heat source on a substrate with an aspect ratio 3 < 1. (d) Heat flux plot of a heat source on a substrate with an aspect ratio 3 < 1 and the substrate thicker
than the substrate in (c).
where T(a,b,t) is the temperature at the center on the surface of the effect is more significant for thinner substrates because the adia-
substrate attached to the heat source (cf. Fig. 5(a)). Fig. 5(b)e(d) bats extend more in the lateral direction. This profile of the adiabats
schematically illustrates the spreading resistance effect. The side results from the small convection on the bottom surface of the
walls in the lateral directions are assumed to be adiabatic (omitting substrate which causes more heat to be conducted in the lateral
the small heat transfer associated with the small area and small direction. The extended lateral profile of the adiabats and the
natural convection effect). For an aspect ratio of unity (cf. Fig. 5(b)), correspondingly increased spreading resistance can be reduced by
the spreading resistance is approximately zero because the tem- increasing the thickness of the substrate as shown in Fig. 5(d) [29].
perature distribution on the top surface of the substrate (z ¼ t) is The thermal spreading resistance reaches a constant value at a
uniform. The characteristic length for conduction in the substrate critical thickness of the substrate so that further increasing the
then equals the thickness of the substrate (t); thus, the overall substrate thickness leads to no further change in the lateral
thermal resistance equals the one-dimensional (z-direction) ther- extension of the adiabats [28,31]. Thus after the critical thickness is
mal resistance. For an aspect ratio less than one, i.e. a concentrated reached, further increases in the substrate thickness will increase
heat source, the “paths for the heat transfer” (adiabats) in the the overall thermal resistance because the one-dimensional
substrate are distorted as shown in Fig. 5(c) and (d) [31]. The
adiabats are closely spaced near the heat source and more broadly
2.0
spaced near the cooler surface on the substrate. The temperature
distribution on the top surface of the substrate is non-uniform; thus 1.8
Aluminum
the spreading resistance is non-zero according to its definition by Graphite
1.6
Eq. (4). The characteristic lengths for conduction in the substrate
are larger than the thickness of the substrate (t), thus increasing the 1.4
overall thermal resistance [28,31]. Vermeersch et al. [42] studied
1.2
the dependence of thermal resistance on the convective heat
transfer coefficient (h) in typical electronic packaging. Their results 1.0
indicated that, for common single phase cooling technologies used
0.8
in electronic packaging systems, the thermal spreading effect
should be considered to prevent underestimating the overall 0.6
thermal resistance. Furthermore, the one-dimensional conduction
0.4
resistance increases proportional to the substrate thickness, while
the spreading resistance decreases with increasing substrate 0.2
thickness because the adiabats are less distorted and shorter as
0.0
illustrated in Fig. 5(d). Previous studies [28,29,31] indicated that, 10 20 30 40 50
for a concentrated heat source, the overall thermal resistance of the
Input power (W)
substrate first decreases with an increase in its thickness when the
spreading resistance is dominant and before a critical thickness is Fig. 6. Thermal resistances for aluminum and graphite substrates (experimental
reached. As illustrated in Fig. 5(c) and (d), the spreading resistance results).
366 K.-S. Yang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 70 (2014) 361e368
360
substrate for all input power levels used in the present study. The
reductions in thermal resistance at input powers of 10 W and 50 W
are 11.8% and 13.6%, respectively. Note that the thermal conduc-
340
tivity in the z-direction of the graphite composite substrate is
similar to that of the aluminum substrate. Therefore, the one-
dimensional thermal resistances of these two substrates are
320
similar. The reduction in the overall thermal resistance is thus
attributed to the reduction in spreading resistance associated with
300
the increased lateral thermal conductivities. This result is consis-
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 tent with the results of Chen et al. [28], where the ratio of kz to kx
(assuming kx ¼ ky) was varied from 0.1 to 1. Their results indicated
Input power (W)
that the spreading resistance can be reduced by increasing the
Fig. 7. Comparison of the numerical results for the chip temperature with the lateral thermal conductivities. This is achieved by effectively
experimental results for aluminum and graphite composite substrates. spreading the heat from the source with high lateral thermal con-
ductivity of the substrate. The temperature distribution is more
thermal resistance is now dominant. For the LED module in the greatly extended in the lateral direction, and thus the spreading
present study, the overall thermal resistance decreases with resistance is decreased. One limiting case would be for very large
increasing thickness, which indicates that the spreading resistance lateral thermal conductivity, so that the heat would be very effec-
is dominant. In this case, the spreading resistance and thus the tively spread laterally in the substrate. The temperature profile in
overall thermal resistance can be reduced by increasing the sub- the substrate then becomes essentially one dimensional (z-direc-
strate thickness or by increasing the thermal conductivity of the tion) and the spreading resistance becomes very small.
substrate, especially in the lateral directions. The effect of
increasing the lateral direction thermal conductivity will be dis- 4.2. Numerical results
cussed in a later section.
In the present study the input electrical power is increased from A multi-physics finite element computational software program
10 to 50 W. From the experimental results as shown in Fig. 4, (COMSOL®) was utilized to further understand the transport phe-
increasing input power increases the overall thermal resistance, nomena in the LED module. The computed domain is shown in
which is attributed to the increasing spreading resistance since it is Fig. 3. Testing of the stability of the numerical solution to mesh size
the dominant resistance. Thus, it is concluded that, for the current was performed. It was found that the numerical results of highest
experimental condition, the spreading resistance increases (adia- (chip) temperature are 384.89 K, 384.71 K and 384.72 K for a total
bats extend more laterally) with increasing input power. number of 420,298 elements, 986,817 elements and 2,634,036 el-
To investigate the effect of thermal conductivity on the thermal ements, respectively. The latter two cases differ by less than
resistance of the substrate, the aluminum plate of 1.6 mm thickness 0.0026%. Thus, the mesh system with 986,817 elements was used
was replaced by a graphite plate of the same dimensions (same for the simulation. Natural convection boundary conditions with
Fig. 8. Top view of the temperature profile for the LED module at 50 W input power (a) aluminum substrate. (b) Graphite composite substrate.
K.-S. Yang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 70 (2014) 361e368 367
the environment temperature of 25 C were used on the outer result is consistent with the experimental results as shown in Fig. 6,
surfaces of the LED module except for the bottom surface of the i.e., the thermal spreading resistance and thus the overall thermal
substrate, where a TEC was utilized to extract heat from the sub- resistance for the graphite substrate is lower than that for the
strate. The TEC is composed of an electrical cooler and a fan. aluminum substrate. It should be emphasized, again, that the one-
Therefore, an effective forced convection boundary condition dimensional thermal resistances in the z-direction are similar for
should be used to simulate the strong cooling effect. To obtain the both materials. Thus, the thermal spreading resistance effect is
convective heat transfer coefficient (hfc) for this boundary, a important in the present cases, and yields large difference in the
computation was carried out for the case of 10 W input power with chip temperatures of these two substrates.
an aluminum substrate of 1.6 mm thickness. With hfc of
3500 W m2 K1, the computed chip temperature is very close to 5. Conclusions
the measured result, with an error of 0.4%. Therefore, this value of
hfc was used. In addition, 70% of the input electrical power is In this study, experiments and numerical analyses were con-
assumed to be converted as heat and dissipated from the chip [32]. ducted for a LED module mounted on four types of substrate. The
Fig. 7 shows a comparison of the numerical results for the chip effects of substrate thickness and thermal conductivity are studied
temperatures with the experimental results for aluminum and based on the measured and computed results. For aluminum sub-
graphite composite substrates at different input powers. There is strates, the thermal resistance increases with decreasing thickness
generally good agreement among the results. For input powers of the substrate. For the same thickness, the thermal resistance for
from 10 to 30 W, the differences between the numerical and graphite composite with anisotropic substrate is approximately
experimental results are less than 0.5%. The numerical results are 12e14% smaller than that of aluminum substrate, depends on the
slightly lower than the experimental results for high input powers input power of the module. Consequently, the chip temperature of
(40 W and 50 W). It is possible that by increasing the input power an LED module with a graphite substrate is lower than one with an
and thus the operating temperature, the luminance efficiency of the aluminum substrate. In addition, the aspect ratio of the heat source
LED decreases, and more input electrical power is converted to to the substrate was fixed and the input power of the LED module
heat. Therefore, the waste heat dissipated from the chip was was varied to directly investigate the effects of input power on the
increased to 75% and 83% for 40 W and 50 W of the input power, thermal spreading resistance. It is found that the spreading resis-
respectively, and then the numerical analysis was repeated. Note tance and thus the chip temperature increase with increasing input
that this assumption is within a reasonable range for common LED power.
modules [32,43]. Consequently, the difference between numerical Numerical results are in reasonably good agreement with the
results and experimental data for the chip temperatures could be experimental data. At the same input power, the lateral tempera-
reduced to 0.5%. In future studies the luminance efficiency of the ture distribution for the larger lateral thermal conductivity graphite
LED should be measured to attain better estimations of the waste substrate is more uniform than the lateral temperature distribution
heat. for the smaller lateral conductivity aluminum substrate. These re-
As shown in Fig. 7, the chip temperature increases with an in- sults indicate that the thermal spreading resistance effect is sig-
crease of input power. At input powers from 10 to 20 W, the chip nificant in the present LED configurations, and should be taken into
temperature of the LED module with the aluminum substrate is account for the LED module design. It is also found that the effect of
close to that of the graphite composite substrate. At higher input the thermal conductivity of the substrate is more important for
powers the difference between chip temperatures with different high power LEDs. Thus, advanced materials with higher thermal
substrates becomes significant. Fig. 8 shows the temperature pro- conductivities (especially in the lateral directions) should be
file on the top surface of the substrate (cf. Fig. 3). The temperature considered for high power LEDs.
distribution is more uniform for the graphite composite substrate
due to its larger lateral thermal conductivities. Consequently, the
Acknowledgements
spreading resistance is smaller for the graphite substrate, as shown
in Fig. 9. Note that the thermal spreading resistance (cf. Eq. (4)) is
Authors would like to acknowledge the supports from the Bu-
calculated using the numerical results for the temperature. This
reau of Energy, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Republic of Taiwan,
and the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan, R.O.C. (under
1.0 project number NSC 103-2218-E-005-004). Dr. Ming-Tsang Lee
wishes to express great thanks to Professor Ralph Greif at the
Aluminum
Graphite University of California at Berkeley for discussions and suggestions
0.8 to this study.
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