Advanced materials—not just faster chips—are key to AI system reliability. Thermal interfaces, adhesives, and coatings play a critical role in managing heat, stress, and aging. Early, cross-disciplinary materials integration is essential to ensure long-term performance in demanding AI and telecom environments.
Key Account Manager - Data/Telecom
In the relentless pursuit of higher MHz, TFLOPS, and ultra-low latency, the focus often zeroes in on silicon and compute capabilities. Yet, when high-performance AI systems fail or degrade in the field, the root causes frequently trace back to materials engineering. What surrounds the chip—thermal interface materials (TIMs), adhesives, coatings, and substrates—is just as critical as the silicon itself, if not more so, especially for long-term reliability.
Thermal interface materials, often overlooked in early design phases, have an outsized impact on GPU and AI accelerator performance. These materials provide the critical heat transfer path between the silicon die and the cooling solution. Even a seemingly small increase of 1–2°C in junction temperature caused by a suboptimal TIM can push a module drawing between 800 and 1,000 watts beyond its safe operating envelope. This results not only in increased power consumption but also accelerated aging of transistors and packaging materials, leading to premature throttling and failures.
Beyond TIMs, underfills and adhesives are vital for maintaining mechanical integrity in today’s complex, tall, and dense chiplet and HBM stacks. These materials must accommodate extreme thermal cycling as AI workloads ramp power up and down rapidly. Mismatches in coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) between dies, substrates, and packaging materials generate mechanical stresses that can cause delamination, microcracks, or subtle but cumulative damage. Such failures are often invisible during initial testing but manifest after months or years in the field, complicating troubleshooting and warranty management.
These challenges become even more pronounced in telecom and network systems, which face harsher environmental conditions. Equipment certified to NEBS standards may be expected to operate reliably in ambient temperatures above 50°C, often with limited or no active cooling, all while withstanding vibration, dust ingress, and humidity. In these environments, materials such as gap fillers, conformal coatings, and low-outgassing adhesives are indispensable. They prevent moisture ingress, reduce mechanical vibration effects, and ensure electrical insulation, enabling multi-year field reliability despite challenging conditions.
Materials also govern electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding and substrate dimensional stability. As transceivers push data rates to 112G+ and beyond, signal integrity becomes exquisitely sensitive to small impedance variations and noise. Substrate warping or dielectric migration can introduce unexpected signal degradation that only appears long after qualification testing. Robust shielding materials and stable laminates are therefore essential components in maintaining system integrity across the product lifespan.
Field aging presents a substantial and often underestimated challenge. After thousands of hours exposed to heat, humidity, and power cycling, adhesives may lose mechanical strength, TIMs can dry out or “pump out,” and protective coatings may degrade. These slow material degradations cause subtle shifts in thermal performance, mechanical reliability, and electrical insulation, ultimately manifesting as system failures. This is especially critical in telecom and network gear designed to operate continuously for seven or more years without interruption.
Because of these risks, material selection cannot be an afterthought. It must happen early in the design process and be tightly coordinated across mechanical, thermal, electrical, and materials engineering teams. Late-stage material swaps or “quick fixes” are typically costly and disruptive, impacting reflow profiles, mechanical compliance, thermal modeling accuracy, and serviceability. Only through collaborative, cross-disciplinary design can the complex interdependencies of advanced AI packaging be effectively managed.
The most advanced AI and network systems today reflect this reality. They succeed not solely on silicon innovation but on holistic engineering that addresses molecular-level reliability, packaging materials science, and thermal-electrical integration. In these systems, every interface and interconnect—down to the microscopic material layers—plays a crucial role in sustaining high performance over years of real-world operation.
Performance in modern AI infrastructure has therefore evolved beyond raw clock speeds and FLOPS. It now hinges on mastering the materials that surround and protect the chip, ensuring that mission-critical infrastructure keeps running smoothly long after launch headlines have faded.
- Article
- Brochure
- Case study
- Infographic
- White paper
Our experts are here to learn more about your needs.
Our support center and experts are ready to help you find solutions for your business needs.