Experimental Investigation of Heat Transfer in Coated Microchannels for MEMS Applications

Abstract

The microchannel cooling technique appears to be a viable solution to high heat rejection requirements of today’s high-power electronic devices. The thermal design of the small electronics cooling devices is a key issue that needs to be optimized in order to keep the system temperatures at certain levels. Thus the need of microchannel became vital. This present work investigates the experimental work conducted in a coated rectangular microchannel heat sink of hydraulic diameter of 0.763 mm for a heat input of 250 to 1020 Watt with water to study the heat transfer characteristics with two types of header arrangement such as rectangular header and trapezoidal header. The header plays a significant role in distributing the water in to the channels. The uniform distribution of water leads to uniform heat transfer in microchannels. From the experimental results carried with two types of header arrangements, it was found that coated rectangular microchannel with trapezoidal header gives better heat transfer characteristics for the range of heat inputs.