Three-layer microfluidic cooling device can remove the heat from small electronics more efficiently

As electronic devices become more powerful and compact, they can generate denser heat flows, or in other words, produce more heat in a smaller area. These heat flows increase the temperature of a device and can damage the underlying components, causing them to malfunction and even contributing to their failure over time.

To prevent this, electronics engineers rely on thermal management systems and cooling strategies. A promising strategy to dissipate heat in smaller electronics is known as microfluidic cooling. This technique allows liquids to flow through microscopic channels built into or near integrated circuits to remove heat and lower the temperature inside a device.

Researchers from Beijing University’s National Key Laboratory of Advanced Micro and Nano Manufacture Technology recently introduced a new microfluidic cooling approach that can remove heat from devices more effectively and efficiently than many previously introduced strategies. This approach, explained in a paper published in Natural electronicsis based on a newly developed three-layer microfluidic cooling device etched into a silicon substrate.

“The miniaturization of advanced electronics can lead to high heat fluxes, which must be dissipated before causing degradation or device failure,” Zhihu Wu, Wei Xiao and their colleagues wrote in their paper. “Embedded microfluidic cooling is of potential value in such systems, but devices are typically limited to heat flows below 2,000 W cm3.⁻². We report a microfluidic cooling strategy that can remove heat fluxes up to 3,000 W cm3⁻² with a pump power of only 0.9 W cm⁻² with single-phase water as coolant.”

The cooling device developed by Wu, Xiao and their colleagues has a three-layer structure. The first layer consists of a tapered manifold, which distributes water over the surface of a chip and ensures that each microchannel receives an equal amount of coolant, so that a device is cooled evenly.

The middle layer, known as the microjet layer, consists of tiny nozzles that form microjets (that is, fast streams of liquid that shoot directly at the surface of a chip), improving heat transfer in devices by targeting the thermal boundary (that is, the area where heat accumulates). The third and final layer consists of microchannels, small grooves etched in silicon that transport the warm coolant from an integrated chip.

“Our approach is based on a three-layer structure consisting of a tapered manifold layer at the top, a microjet layer in the middle, and a microchannel layer with sawtooth-shaped sidewalls at the bottom,” Wu, Xiao and their colleagues wrote. “The structures are etched directly into the back of the silicon substrate using standard microelectromechanical system technology. In addition, the coefficient of performance can reach 13,000 and dissipate a heat flux of 1,000 W cm3.⁻² at a maximum chip temperature rise of 65 K.”

Initial testing showed that the new microfluidic cooling approach proposed by these researchers removed heat significantly more effectively than most previously introduced strategies. Furthermore, the team’s three-layer device requires little pump power (0.9 W/cm²) to cool the chips and could be manufactured on a large scale using existing manufacturing processes.

In the future, the recent work of Wu, Xiao and their colleagues could support the development of smaller electronic devices that are also durable, high-performance and energy efficient. Furthermore, their proposed cooling device could soon be further improved and evaluated in tests with a wider range of small electronics.

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