Currently, the electrical connection between processors and circuit boards is generally realized through electrical connectors. However, in order to reduce the overall height of the electrical connector assembly to follow the development trend of electronic products such as notebook computers towards ultra-thin structures, the use of electrical connector is usually avoided in the industry, and instead, contact points on a lower surface of the processor are connected to solder pads on a surface of the circuit board by using a solder material, so as to achieve the electrical connection between the processor and the circuit board.
Alternatively, Chinese Patent No. CN200520053773.2 provides a chip module having double-sided heat dissipation effect. Referring to FIGS. 3-6 of the accompanying drawings for the specification of the above patent, the chip module includes a substrate and a first thermally conductive region and a second thermally conductive region located on upper and lower sides of the substrate. The substrate includes an integrated circuit located in the center thereof, on which the first thermally conductive region and the second thermally conductive region are disposed opposite to each other. A connecting portion substantially perpendicular to the substrate is disposed at a position where the second thermally conductive region and the substrate are in contact. The connecting portion may be received in a receiving housing disposed on the circuit board. Evenly arranged electrically conductive regions are disposed around the substrate. The electrically conductive regions are located on one side of the substrate, and may be formed with rectangular or round shape. The electrically conductive regions are arranged in one or more rows, and may be directly soldered to the circuit board, so as to achieve the electrical connection between the chip module and the circuit board.
Such an electrical connector structure easily incurs the following problems.
1. As the thermally conductive regions are disposed on the upper and lower sides of the substrate, although such a structure can achieve double-sided heat dissipation to improve the heat dissipation efficiency, the method of increasing heat dissipation area sacrifices the height. As compared with a chip module only one side of which is provided with a thermally conductive region, the chip module of such a structure is thicker by at least the thickness of the second thermally conductive region, and thus cannot follow the development trend of electronic products towards ultra-thin structures and is inapplicable to notebook computers.
2. As the thermally conductive regions are disposed on the upper and lower sides of the substrate, and the electrical connection between the substrate and the circuit board needs to be realized through the electrically conductive regions, the electrically conductive regions can only be disposed around the substrate, which requires changing the design of solder joints in the existing chip module which are arranged downwards in a matrix in the central region of the substrate. Moreover, as the thermally conductive regions are already disposed on the substrate, only a small area is left on the substrate for disposing the electrically conductive regions. Therefore, when a large number of solder joints of the electrically conductive regions are required, it is difficult to dispose the large number of solder joints in such a small area on the substrate. As a result, the process complexity is increased, and the dense arrangement of solder joints easily causes short circuit.
Therefore, a heretofore unaddressed need exists in the art to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.