Chapter 6 - Phase change material application in heat sink: Microencapsulated PCM

Abstract

An effectual thermal management system is to be considered an integral part of all electronic devices, which plays a significant role in the system's total efficiency. The number of studies and the evolution of electronics cooling techniques reveals the importance of an efficient cooling solution based on active and passive methods in the electronics industry. This chapter presents and discusses the scope of the passive cooling method with microencapsulated phase change material (PCM) in a conventional finned heat sink subjected to constant and intermittent heating for electronics cooling. The application of PCM-based passive cooling technics gets attention in recent years as it proves its efficiency by considering some key factors. Even convectional PCMs have advantages to be considered for a thermal management application, some of its inherent properties such as “volume expansion,” “spillage issues,” “reaction to the container and integral components,” “subcooling effect in bulk quantity,” and “dispersion, settlement issues with nanomaterial addition” limits its application. Encapsulation of PCM is one of the adequate solutions to address these issues for thermal management applications, last but not least in other energy-related fields. The subsequent sections presented and discussed the synthesis process of microencapsulated PCM (MEPCM), the characterization techniques and observations derived, and the heat transfer performance with the heat sink. The thermal performance of MEPCM is evaluated with a heat sink, which is subjected to constant and intermittent heat flux with varying sequences to address the different modes of operations. The experimental results show that the heat sink which contains MEPCM can perform better relative to that of a heat sink with fins only.