At a glance
| Booth | I3000 |
| Country | GB |
| Website | www.thermapsolutions.com |
Company profile
THERMAP SOLUTIONS LTD is a spin-out from the University of Bristol that designs and manufactures advanced laser-based thermal characterisation instrumentation for accurate and reliable measurement of critical thermal properties. Its work addresses the increasing importance of thermal properties as semiconductor-device power density rises, including the need to optimise interfaces and bonding layers such as die attach so that heat can be extracted efficiently. The company positions its instrumentation for complex multilayer structures that conventional characterisation techniques struggle to measure, and its commercially available tools provide in-situ measurements across materials ranging from epitaxial thin films to die attach layers. For semiconductor companies manufacturing high-power devices, the technology is intended to accelerate thermal-design optimisation, shorten R&D feedback cycles, improve quality control, and support consistent thermal performance and production reliability. THERMAP SOLUTIONS LTD has collaborated with the University of Oxford, IMM-CNR in Italy, Soitec in France, and QFI in the USA. The team reports more than 50 years of experience in thermal characterisation and heat management, and the company was established in 2019 after several years of refining thermoreflectance techniques for deployment in commercial environments, with support from the QTEC incubator, Innovate UK, and strategic partner QFI. Alongside instrumentation supply, THERMAP SOLUTIONS LTD provides contract measurements and consultation for thermal-characterisation needs, combining instrument development with measurement and advisory services.
Exhibits
THERMAP SOLUTIONS LTD supplies thermoreflectance instrumentation for measuring thermal properties of bulk, layered, and composite materials, with applications cited for semiconductors, composites, and nuclear fuels. Its depth-sensitive approach is designed for thin films, coatings, and multilayer structures, where separating the properties of individual layers requires depth resolution that is not typically needed for straightforward bulk-material measurements. The instrumentation is described as having the lateral resolution needed to measure thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity, heat capacity, and thermal boundary resistance in multilayers with thicknesses ranging from tens of nanometres to centimetres. Thermoreflectance uses the temperature dependence of a surface's optical reflectance and a pump-probe laser arrangement, in which a stronger pump laser heats the sample while a weaker reflected probe laser monitors relative-reflectivity changes as temperature varies. THERMAP SOLUTIONS LTD offers two thermoreflectance variants, Frequency Domain Thermoreflectance, or FDTR, and Time Domain Thermoreflectance, or TDTR, so that different sample depths and structure types can be addressed. In TDTR, a nano-second pulsed pump laser periodically heats the sample surface and a continuous-wave probe laser monitors thermal dissipation between heating pulses through changes in surface reflectivity. Because cooling rate depends on thermophysical properties, the TDTR probe-signal decay is fitted to an optimised heat-transfer model to determine thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity, and thermal boundary resistance. TDTR is described as extremely surface-sensitive and optimised for thin films and multilayer structures with layer thicknesses below 10μm, while the broader thermoreflectance description gives a probing-depth range of 10nm to 10μm. In FDTR, a continuous pump laser is modulated with a lock-in amplifier to transiently heat the sample, and the temperature oscillation exhibits an intrinsic phase delay relative to the pump modulation. An unmodulated continuous-wave probe laser observes that phase behaviour, and measurements collected across a range of modulation frequencies use the frequency-dependent thermal penetration depth to perform depth-sensitive characterisation of multilayer samples. FDTR is presented as suitable for both bulk materials and multilayer structures, including structures greater than 10μm thick, because lower modulation frequencies probe greater depths than higher frequencies. Collaboration opportunities include validation projects on thermal challenges in die bonding or advanced packaging for GaN/SiC-based power or RF devices and AI/HPC chips, plus joint integration of in-line thermal-characterisation tools for quality control of die or module attach interfaces. The company also proposes joint development and validation of a combined laser-based thermal-ultrasonic metrology system for thermal and structural analysis, including void and delamination detection, and collaboration with manufacturers on cooling solutions for high-power SiC/GaN and AI/HPC devices. Thermoreflectance techniques have been used in research for decades to characterise a wide range of materials, giving the company's commercial instrumentation a measurement basis already applied to semiconductors, composites, and nuclear fuels.
Capabilities and products
- laser-based thermal characterization instrumentation
- design and manufacture of thermoreflectance instrumentation
- thermal-property measurement for bulk, layered and composite materials
- contract thermal measurements and consultation
- frequency-domain thermoreflectance (FDTR) measurement
- time-domain thermoreflectance (TDTR) measurement