Monolithic Integration of a Micropin-Fin Heat Sink in a 28-nm FPGA

Abstract

Microfluidic cooling has been demonstrated as an effective means of cooling microelectronic circuits with a very low convective thermal resistance and potential for integration in close proximity to the area of heat generation. However, microfluidic cooling experiments to date have been limited to silicon with resistive heaters representing the heat generating circuitry. In this paper, a micropin-fin heat sink is etched into the back side of an Altera Stratix V field-programmable gate array (FPGA), built in a 28-nm CMOS process. Thermal and electrical measurements are made running a benchmark pulse compression algorithm on the FPGA. Deionized water is used as a coolant with flow rates ranging from 0.15 to 3.0 mL/s and inlet temperature ranging from 21 °C to 50 °C. An average junction-to-inlet thermal resistance of 0.07 °C/W is achieved.