Boiling Heat Transfer Enhancement Using Micro-Machined Porous Channels for Electronics Cooling

Abstract

Boiling heat transfer enhancement for a passive electronics cooling design is presented in this paper. A novel pool boiling enhancement technique is developed and characterized. A combination of surface modification by metallic coating and micro-machined porous channels attached to the modified surface is tested and reported. An experimental rig is set up using a standard BGA package with 12 mm × 12 mm thermal die as a test surface. The limiting heat flux for a horizontally oriented silicon chip with fluorocarbon liquid FC-72 is typically around 15 W/cm². Boiling heat transfer with the designed enhancement techniques is investigated, and the factors influencing the enhancement are analyzed. The metallic coated surface at 10°C wall superheat has a heat flux six times larger than an untreated chip surface. Micro-machined porous channels with different pore sizes and pitches are tested in combination with the metallic coated surface. The boiling heat flux is seven times larger at lower wall superheat compared to the plain chip surface. Maximum critical heat flux (CHF) of 38 W/cm² is obtained with 0.3 mm pore diameter and 1 mm pore pitch. A ratio of pore diameter and pore pitch is found to correlate well with the heat transfer enhancement obtained by experiments. Structures with smaller pore diameter to pitch ratio and larger pore opening are found to have higher heat transfer enhancement in the tested combination.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the Institute of Microelectronics (IME), Singapore, for this research work. The authors would also like to thank Dr. Mahadevan K. Iyer, Dr. Lim Thiam Beng, and the IME management team for their guidance and encouragement. C. C. Wong from Nanyang Technological University helped in the calibration of the experimental setup.