Recent advancements in single-phase liquid-based heat transfer in microchannels

The continued push to miniaturize electronic devices requires highly efficient heat dissipation concepts to ensure high system performance and reliability. Single-phase liquid-based cooling through microchannels have received industry acceptance over the years. This chapter covers the basics of microchannel heat transfer and frictional losses, and historical account of methods employed for enhanced thermal-hydraulic performance, with emphasis on advancements in the past decade. The investigations in microchannel enhanced heat transfer have been primarily focused on modifying the channel shapes, introduction of flow disturbances, inlet and outlet flow conditioning, multi-layer microchannel heat sinks, novel fluids with superior thermal conductivity and many others. The above concepts successfully enhance the heat transfer with some penalty on pressure drop, and the research efforts are aimed toward achieving reduced overall thermal resistance at a certain pumping power. Inclusion of porous structures (as a replacement to solid fins) and wall superhydrophobicity methods have also been evaluated for their ability to reduce the pressure drop while maintain enhanced cooling levels. The growing importance of multi-objective optimization with the above cooling concepts is outlined, along with the increasing role of additive manufacturing in the realization of next generation thermal management technologies in electronic cooling.