Fabrication, assembly and heat transfer testing of low-profile copper-based microchannel heat exchangers

Low-profile, Cu-based microchannel heat exchangers (MHEs) with different geometric dimensions were fabricated, bonded and assembled. A transient liquid phase (TLP) process was used for bonding of Cu-based MHEs with total thicknesses ranging from 600 µm to 1700 µm. The structural integrity of TLP-bonded Cu MHEs was examined. Device-level heat transfer testing was performed on a series of Cu-based MHEs to study the influence of microchannel dimensions on overall heat transfer performance, corroborated by computational results from a simple 2D finite element analysis. The present results demonstrate the promise of low-profile metallic MHEs for high heat flux cooling applications.