Thermal modeling and comparative analysis of jet impingement liquid cooling for high power electronics

Abstract

Thermal management of high-power electronic devices has become the bottleneck that restricts the working performance. Taking fully advantage of the cooling potential is urgently required. However, most existing direct liquid cooling methods only consider the cooling of the top surface of the electronic devices/chips, causing insufficient utilization of exposed chip surfaces. In this paper, a jet impingement body cooling device (JIBC) and a channel/jet impingement hybrid body cooling (HBC) device with micro-nozzles using the traditional mechanical machining method were developed. The body cooling devices provide high efficient cooling to the top surface and the side surfaces of the chip. The cooling performance were tested by experiments and it is found to be better than the traditional direct liquid cooling method. The total thermal resistance of 0.041 k/W, which can be compared to the thermal resistance of the thermal interface material, was achieved by the JIBC device when the flow rate is 1800 mL/min. The thermal model for the developed cooling methods was established to predict the chip temperature and characterize the heat transfer mechanism. It is found that the critical nozzle diameter exists, which determines which one of the two developed body cooling device has the better cooling performance. The proposed thermal model is found to be necessary for the quick design and optimal design of the body cooling device for high power and high heat flux electronics.