Screening and Evaluation of Mixture Formulations for Electronics Thermal Management Using Pool Boiling

Abstract

Computer-aided molecular design and figure of merit analysis were used to screen mixture formulations that enhance the pool boiling heat transfer performance of Novec fluid HFE 7200. Mixtures of HFE 7200 with methanol and ethoxybutane were identified as promising candidates for further study, and their thermophysical and dielectric properties were measured. The pool boiling performance of the two mixtures was investigated on a 1 cm × 1 cm silicon substrate with copper nanowire arrays. The addition of both methanol and ethoxybutane to HFE 7200 resulted in a substantial increase in the critical heat flux. However, the addition of methanol had a detrimental effect on incipience superheat and heat transfer coefficient, whereas these properties only changed marginally upon the addition of ethoxybutane to HFE 7200. This suggests that HFE 7200 + ethoxybutane mixtures show promise as candidates for direct immersion cooling of electronics.