H2020 European project STREAMS: general overview

Thermal dissipation is a major issue in microelectronics, especially for 3D circuits where the dense stacking of thin silicon layers leads to a significant increase of heat densities. In this context the H2020 European project STREAMS develops active cooling thermal management solutions for silicon interposers. The project focuses on three functionalities: versatile microfluidic actuation, precise thermal mapping, and thermal energy harvesting. The integration of those three functionalities on a silicon interposer is described with first the front-side integration of the thermoelectric functionalities and then a backside integration of the micro-channels embedding self-adaptive fins and valves. The third part presents the trade-off that had to be made between harvested energy and cooling efficiency during the integration of the different functionalities.