3-D Printed Microjet Impingement Cooling for Thermal Management of Ultrahigh-Power GaN Transistors

Abstract

Future GaN-based radio frequency (RF) high-electron-mobility-transistors (HEMTs) can enable increased areal power dissipation by, for example, integrating GaN device layers with high thermal conductivity diamond substrates. To maximize the benefit of the ultrahigh-power-density electronic devices, improved package-level cooling methods are needed to prevent the package and heatsink becoming a thermal bottleneck. We demonstrate that 3-D printed polymeric microjet liquid impingement cooling can reduce the thermal resistance at the package level by ~60% with respect to GaN RF HEMTs mounted on conventional packaging.