HIGH THERMAL-CONDUCTIVITY ALUMINUM NITRIDE CERAMIC SUBSTRATES AND PACKAGES

Aluminum nitride (AlN) ceramics have been considered very useful as a semiconductor substrate and package material because of several excellent characteristics such as high thermal conductivity, a thermal expansion coefficient close to that of silicon, and a low dielectric constant. However, only direct bond copper (DBC) substrates and metallized substrates have come into the market because there are still several production problems to be solved. In this paper, breakthrough technologies to achieve the following whole line of AlN products for wider use in the electronics market are described as follows: • plain substrate; • metallized substrate; • DBC substrate; • substrates for thin film circuits; • substrates for thick film circuits; • co-fired multilayer packages. © 1990 IEEE