Numerical parametric study of a hotspot-targeted microfluidic cooling array for microelectronics

Abstract Thermal management in integrated chips is one of the major challenges on advanced microelectronics. The increase in power density is raising the need for microchannel liquid cooling solutions. Although this technology can accommodate high heat rates, it has poor temperature uniformity and may require significant pumping power. In this work, a cooling scheme aiming for high temperature uniformity and low pumping power is numerically studied. The cooling scheme consists in a matrix of microfluidic cells with thermostatic microvalves, fed by an interdigitated manifold. The flow through each cell is controlled with the self-adaptive microvalves to only deliver the flow rate required to maintain a design temperature. This system is assessed with steady state CFD and heat transfer studies of various microfluidic cell designs combined with a time-dependent and non-uniform heat load scenario of a chip with hotspots. The studied cooling scheme practically eliminates chip temperature non-uniformity while also reducing the pumping power by nearly one order of magnitude compared to traditional microchannel configurations for similar applications.