Two-Phase Boiling in a Replaceable Embedded Heat Sink for Ultra-High Heat Flux SiC Chip Cooling

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel two-phase water cooling microchannel heat sink achieving unprecedented heat flux and high efficiency, significantly advancing thermal management for high-power electronics.

Contribution

The study introduces a hierarchical microchannel heat sink design that achieves record-breaking critical heat flux and efficiency in two-phase water cooling for electronics.

Findings

Achieved a critical heat flux of 1682 W/cm² with high COP.

Demonstrated a heat flux of 2500 W/cm² at higher flow rates.

Reduced power consumption for heat removal by a factor of over three.

Abstract

While Moore's Law has approached its physical limits lately, the high integration and miniaturisation of electronics have also brought another thermal failure obstacle. Previous studies on single-phase flow demanded significant pump power to achieve higher CHF, but this approach risked exceeding the chip's mechanical limits and complicating packaging. The elevated junction temperature (above 175 C) of third-generation semiconductors makes them ideal for two-phase water cooling which utilizes the huge latent heat during boiling of water to minimize the flow rate and maximize the COP. In this work, we designed an embedded hierarchical microchannel heat sink for heat transfer by deionised water two-phase cooling. We observed an unprecedented Critical Heat Flux (CHF) of 1682W cm-2 with COP up to 23615 at flow rate of 3.0 ml s-1, which means Only 70 mW of power is needed to take away the heat on the 1682 W per square centimetre chip, corresponding to a 3-fold increase compared to single-phase microchannels with same flowrate. At a high flow rate of 10 ml s-1, we even achieved a remarkable heat flux of 2500 W cm-2. This technology is anticipated to overcome the bottleneck in electronic thermal management.