Session: 12-13-01: Heat Transfer in Electronic Equipment I

Paper Number: 173436

Enhancing Heat Transfer Through Microchannel Array in Heat Sinks 

With more advancements in high power-density microelectronics, thermal management becomes a critical bottleneck. Traditionally, heat sinks utilizing airflow have been used in cooling, but as electronics continue to shrink in size, air cooled heat sinks are insufficient for high-power-density applications. For higher heat dissipation requirements of ever-shrinking microelectronics, microchannels that utilize liquid flow to take advantage of larger heat transfer coefficients are being studied due to their ability to enhance thermal management by increasing the heat dissipation limit. One of the key limitations of some microchannel designs is the non-uniform temperature distribution within the heat sinks, especially under ultra-high heat fluxes. This project focuses on improving the non-uniform temperature distribution by utilizing the high heat transfer coefficient available within microchannels as well as the design freedom enabled by advanced additive manufacturing. Specifically, we aim to engineer the flow within arrays of the microchannels by employing a novel channel swap geometry. Presently, there are no prior published studies of channel swapping or quantitative evaluation of its benefits on heat sinks with additive manufacturing. Our work represents a new design philosophy and will provide fundamental knowledge of microchannel swapping. The channel swap works by reducing the thermal resistance of the top channel by vertically swapping the location of the bottom and top channels, thus increasing the overall heat transfer. This approach helps maintain a larger temperature difference between the coolant and chip surface, achieving a chip max temperature reduction while trading a minimal pressure drop increase compared to an equivalent unidirectional microchannel heat sink. Through future numerical simulations, analytical models, and experimental validation, we aim to further quantify the thermal performance benefits and optimize the swap region geometry for highest thermal dissipation at lowest pressure drop. To guide the design and predict performance enhancement with channel swapping, both high fidelity numerical simulation and simplified analytical models will be developed and experimentally verified. Our current numerical simulations show promise for enhanced heat transfer due to lower chip temperature compared to the baseline, additionally, our CFD results show a manageable increase in pressure drop due to the complex swap geometry. With further development and modification of current models, in addition to experimental validations, we will explore our hypothesis that the channel swapping microchannel array enhances thermal performance in single-phase liquid-cooling heat sinks for high performance microelectronics with minimal pressure drop penalty. This work offers a new design framework for efficient cooling in compact applications like aerospace, smartphones, and AI data centers, with potential to enhance microchip reliability and longevity.

Presenting Author: Patrick Park University of Tennessee

Presenting Author Biography: I’m a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Tennessee, with a concentration in thermal-fluid sciences. As a Graduate Research and Teaching Assistant, I contribute to experimental and computational projects while mentoring undergraduates. My research is in advanced heat transfer technologies such as microchannel heat sinks, radiative cooling, and solar evaporators (solar desalination).

Authors:

Patrick Park University of Tennessee
Xiangyu Li The University of Tennessee