Characteristics of heat transfer and fluid flow in a fractal multilayer silicon microchannel

Abstract

An experimental and numerical investigation of a fractal-like multilayer silicon microchannel heat sink is conducted for high heat flux applications. The design and fabrication of the heat sink and experimental facility are described. The unit thermal resistance, pressure drop and Nusselt number of the multilayer microchannel are determined by layer number for a range of flow conditions. The results indicate that the fractal-like multilayer microchannel architecture has a significant effect on the performance of heat transfer and fluid flow. The heat sink is shown to provide favorable cooling performance with low volume thermal resistance (2.5Kcm3/W for 5 layers) and pumping power (0.07 W at 400 ml/min) for different power density electronics applications.