A peer-reviewed perspective from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and a consortium of industry and academic partners has identified polymer-based "soft" materials as a critical-and underserved-frontier in semiconductor packaging, with direct implications for automotive electronics reliability, thermal management, and supply-chain resilience.
Background
The paper, titled "Material Needs and Measurement Challenges for Advanced Semiconductor Packaging: Understanding the Soft Side of Science," was authored by researchers at NIST, North Carolina State University, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, ASE, Intel, Innocentrix, and Binghamton University.1Prepare for the 2025 Supply-Driven Chip Shortage It builds on insights from a NIST-organized workshop held at the 35th annual Electronics Packaging Symposium in Binghamton, NY, in September 2024,2How the Chip Shortage Never Really Ended | by elongated_musk | Medium and was published in IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology in 2025.
Polymer-based packaging materials, once viewed as little more than adhesives or encasements for chips, have emerged as key factors in reliability, performance, and cost.3Thermal Management for EV Power Electronics 2024-2034: Forecasts, Technologies, Markets, and Trends: IDTechEx Polymers such as epoxies, silicones, and polyimides encapsulate chips, connect them to circuit boards, and maintain operational reliability. As the industry shifts toward 3D heterogeneous integration-stacking or linking multiple chips in three dimensions-demands on these materials are escalating rapidly.
The automotive sector sits at the intersection of these pressures. Dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) is essential for powering infotainment, digital clusters, ADAS, and EV systems. As the industry moves toward software-defined architectures and centralized computing, DRAM requirements will rise. Power density is climbing in parallel: efficient heat dissipation remains a critical challenge affecting performance, reliability, and lifespan. High-power electronics based on wide- and ultrawide-bandgap semiconductors exhibit power densities exceeding 10 kW/cm²-hundreds of times higher than digital electronics.
Key Technical Developments
The NIST-led work addresses three polymer failure modes of particular concern for automotive-grade components. Unlike metals or ceramics, polymers are time- and temperature-sensitive, absorbing moisture and changing shape under stress. These behaviors can cause chips to warp, signals to degrade, or connections to fail over years of operation. In automotive deployments, wide thermal cycling ranges and multi-decade service life requirements compound these failure modes.
The paper highlights measurement techniques under development-from advanced rheology and spectroscopy to stress measurements-that track how polymers cure, shrink, and deform during manufacturing, factors directly affecting device reliability. NIST is also pioneering open, nonproprietary polymer systems called research-grade test materials (RGTMs) that serve as benchmarks across industry, academia, and government to improve reproducibility and feed reliable data into computational models.
"Modeling without metrology is imagination," stated William Chen, Chair of the IEEE's Heterogeneous Integration Roadmap for semiconductors, in the paper. The comment underscores the industry's growing dependence on validated material models, particularly as automotive suppliers adopt digital twin workflows for module design and qualification.
Thermal interface materials (TIMs) represent a parallel technical bottleneck. Typical TIM2s for EV power electronics as of early 2025 have a thermal conductivity of around 4 W/mK, but this figure is expected to rise. The transition to silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFETs in EV inverters pushes junction temperatures to 175°C or above-compared with up to 150°C for silicon IGBTs-driving demand for high-performance TIMs and die-attach materials. Ongoing research focuses on improving thermal conductivity by incorporating high-thermal-conductivity fillers into polymer matrices.
At the packaging architecture level, 3D packaging stacks active dies directly atop one another. While this vertical integration promises performance gains, it introduces significantly greater power and thermal management challenges.
Supply-Chain Dimension
The materials challenge intersects with escalating geopolitical supply risks for automotive-grade chips. In late September 2025, the Dutch government seized control of Nexperia, a Chinese-owned chipmaker supplying essential components to carmakers worldwide. Within days, China retaliated by restricting exports from Nexperia's Chinese operations, triggering warnings from automakers of serious production disruptions in Europe and potentially the U.S. The European Automobile Manufacturers' Association stated that carmakers were close to halting production lines, marking the second major chip-supply crisis in four years.
According to NIST researchers, some new packaging materials can take 10 to 25 years to reach production, making early, collaborative materials development essential to long-term supply-chain resilience. During the pandemic-driven chip shortage, one less-publicized issue was the BT resin substrate shortage-substrates essential for packaging semiconductors yet produced by few companies due to high capital costs. The NIST framework for open benchmark materials is designed to reduce such single-point dependencies in the packaging materials supply chain.
Outlook
IDTechEx forecasts that the global thermal interface materials market will exceed US$7 billion by 2036, with the market projected to be 2.6 times larger than in 2026. Key growth areas include advanced semiconductor packaging, data centers, ADAS, and EV power electronics, with the overall TIM market expected to post a 10%+ CAGR between 2026 and 2036. For automotive suppliers, the NIST metrology framework and RGTM benchmarks offer a pathway to accelerate qualification of next-generation polymer compounds and composites-a prerequisite for meeting both performance targets and tightening functional safety regulations across EV and ADAS platforms.
