Experimental and Numerical Study of Transient Electronic Chip Cooling by Liquid Flow in Microchannel Heat Sinks

Abstract

Cooling of electronic chips has become a critical aspect in the development of electronic devices. Overheating may cause the malfunction or damage of electronics. The time needed for heat removal is particularly important in a wide range of electronic systems, such as switching circuits. Thus, it is important to characterize the transient behavior of the system and determine the response. Most studies in the literature have focused on steady-state circumstances and the transient effects have not been considered in the detail needed. In this article, an experimental system and a numerical model were developed to test the effects of different parameters and their influence on the transient electronic chip cooling by liquid flow in microchannel heat sinks. The temperature change with time of the system for different heat fluxes at different flow rates was determined, from which the response time is obtained. Three different configurations of multi-microchannel heat sinks were tested during the experiment. Numerical models were then developed to simulate the transient cooling for two of these configurations. A good agreement between the experimental data and numerical results showed that single-channel models are capable of simulating the thermal behavior of the entire heat sink by applying appropriate assumptions and boundary conditions. The experimental results can then be used to improve the numerical models and vice versa.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the support provided to Dr. T. Zhang under the Exchange Ph.D. Program of China, and the use of the fabrication facilities of Microelectronics Research Laboratory (MERL) of the School of Engineering, Rutgers University.