Michael Ohadi, Ph.D.

Next Generation Embedded Liquid Cooling with Ultra Low Thermal Resistance . by Michael Ohadi, Ph.D., Presentation

The demand for increased functionality of electronic products and the simultaneous trend of smaller feature size continue to raise dissipated power and the resulting power densities in electronic systems, introducing new challenges and opportunities in thermal management of modern electronics.  Successful next generation thermal management systems will have to mitigate thermal limitations on the operation of high performance electronic systems to satisfy the increasing market demand for faster, smaller, lighter, and more energy efficient and cost effective products. The next generation cooling systems will integrate the thermal management techniques into the chip layout, and/or package design, to provide substantially enhanced cooling performance with ultra-low thermal resistance between chip-level heat generation and system-level heat removal path.  This presentation will review most recent progress in embedded micro cooling systems, including use of use of thin film micro channel cooling. The technique involves utilization of 3-D structures and a distributed liquid delivery, with dedicated channels for vapor and liquid to maximize phase change heat transfer while facilitating   isothermalization of the surface and minimizing the pressure drops and the associated pumping power requirements. Record-high heat transfer coefficients have been experimentally demonstrated with heat removal capability in excess of 1 kW/cm² and heat density of 1 kW/cm³.