An Experimental Study on the Effect of Configuration of Multiple Microchannels on Heat Removal for Electronic Cooling

This paper presents the design, fabrication, and characterization of three different configurations of multiple microchannel heat sink devices to improve their overall cooling efficiency for potential applications in electronic cooling. A fabrication and packaging process based on standard UV-lithography, wet etching, and bonding was developed to allow a rapid parametric study. An anisotropic chemical etch with potassium hydroxide, water, and isopropanol is used to fabricate microchannels on (110)-oriented silicon wafers. PDMS (Polydimethylsiloxane) was tested as the cover of microchannels due to its mechanical flexibility. It is transparent so that the microchannel flow can be visualized using a microscope. An open flow loop, which consists of syringe pump and a power supply, was designed to test the heat sinks with different configurations. Temperature data were collected at different locations by a Data Acquisition (DAQ) system and recorded by Labview software to investigate the heat transfer characteristics of the heat sink. Three heat sinks, with different configurations, were tested. They all included microchannels of width 50 μm, depth 60 μm, and fin width 200 μm. Some Typical results on heat transfer are presented, along with discussion on the efficiency for heat removal.