Additive Manufacturing for Enhancing Thermal Dissipation in Heat Sink Implementation: A Review

Abstract

Advances in manufacturing technologies and the recent explosion of materials and methods for creating additively manufactured devices has opened new avenues for novel heat sink designs that can be optimized for flow and conduction considerations. This review paper highlights many of the recent successes and challenges associated with the utilization of “3 D printed” heat sinks for applications in electronics cooling. The purpose is to evaluate the current state of the art in additively manufactured thermal management solutions and the underlying physics and engineering approaches that illustrate the great promise of this emerging sector. The emphasis is therefore not only on the underlying strengths of additive manufacturing, such as its ability to greatly expand the realm of spatial and surface design for heat transfer, but also to illustrate some of its drawbacks that hinder its utilities in certain applications, such as the dearth of materials it can handle. This work looks toward future possibilities of custom designed heat removal schemes which utilize nontraditional geometries that were previously impossible using conventional machining methods.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Center for Power Optimization of Electro-Thermal Systems for their support during this work.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bakhtiyar Mohammad Nafis

Bakhtiyar Mohammad Nafis holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. He is currently a PhD student at the University of Arkansas, working on thermal management and reliability of electronic devices.

Reece Whitt

Reece Whitt is a first-year PhD student at the University of Arkansas in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His research is centered around the design and manufacturing of novel thermal management systems for high-density power electronics. These new approaches hold potential applications in hybrid electric aircraft propulsion systems, heavy machinery operations and other mobile power electronics.

Ange-Christian Iradukunda

Ange-Christian Iradukunda holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Arkansas. He is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on electronics packaging, at the University of Arkansas.

David Huitink

David Huitink is an assistant professor at the department of mechanical engineering at the University of Arkansas. Prior to joining Academia, he spent more than 5 years in industry, working in microelectronics technology development and manufacturing at Intel Corporation, where he served as Quality & Reliability Engineering Program Manager for Intel’s Custom Foundry Division. There he pioneered the development of advanced methods of predicting reliability of silicon-based flip chip microelectronic packages, as well as developed testing protocols and FEA methods for governing Design for Reliability guidance. Additionally, he has patent applications filed in Low Z-height Electronic System design and thermal optimization of space limited electronic systems. Currently, he serves as an Associate Editor of Microelectronics Reliability Journal.