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

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

To prevent this from happening, 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 prompts the flow of fluids through microscopic channels that are built into or in the proximity of integrated circuits, to remove heat and reduce the temperature inside a device.

Researchers at Peking University, the National Key Laboratory of Advanced Micro and Nano Manufacture Technology recently introduced a new microfluidic cooling approach that could remove heat from devices more effectively and efficiently than many previously introduced strategies. This approach, outlined in a paper published in Nature Electronics, relies 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 they cause device degradation or 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 fluxes below 2,000 W cm⁻². We report a microfluidic cooling strategy that can dissipate heat fluxes up to 3,000 W cm⁻² at a pumping power of only 0.9 W cm⁻² using single-phase water as the coolant.”

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

The middle layer, known as the microjet layer, consists of tiny nozzles that form microjets (i.e., high-speed streams of fluid that shoot directly onto a chip’s surface), improving the transfer of heat in devices by targeting the thermal boundary (i.e., the region where heat builds up). The third and final layer is comprised of microchannels, tiny grooves etched into silicon that carry the warm coolant out of an integrated chip.

“Our approach is based on a three-tier structure that consists of a tapered manifold layer on 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 backside of the silicon substrate using standard microelectromechanical system technology. Moreover, the coefficient of performance can reach 13,000 and dissipate a heat flux of 1,000 W cm⁻² at a maximum chip temperature rise of 65 K.”

In initial tests, the new microfluidic cooling approach proposed by these researchers was found to remove heat significantly more effectively than most previously introduced strategies. In addition, the team’s three-layered device requires little pumping power (0.9 W/cm²) to cool chips and could be fabricated on a large-scale using existing manufacturing processes.

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

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