A novel method of cooling a semiconductor device through a jet impingement thermal management system: CFD modeling and experimental evaluation

Abstract

This study investigates the viability of a liquid jet-impingement (JI) thermal management system (TMS). The JI-TMS was used as a heat dissipation tactic to ensure a silicon semiconductor-based pulse-power device’s temperature was maintained below 80 °C during operation. The JI-TMS’s design, which is comprised of 27 nozzles (1 mm nozzle diameter), is analyzed by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling, with 100 W of average power (i.e., heat generation rate). The heat transfer fluid (HTF) is pure silicone fluid with a viscosity of 20 cSt. The selected HTF has the dielectric constant which provides better electrical insulation than other common HTFs (water, water–glycol, etc.). Validation of the model was performed experimentally to ensure the accuracy of the CFD results. The results show that device’s temperature is maintained well below the maximum desired operating temperature (57.5 °C when using 0.06 kgs), showing average difference of 5.89% between numerical and experimental data. To better understand the achieved error, heat capacity analysis of the HTF was investigated with differential scanning calorimeter which shows an average deviation of 13.12% with the reported vendor value. The results from this study can be a benchmark for cooling purposes of semiconductor devices in high power densities.