A compact micro pulsating heat pipe was developed and tested to investigate thermal performance. Micro Flat Plate Pulsating Heat Pipe (FP-PHP) was fabricated using DRIE MEMS technique. A total of 10 parallel interconnected rectangular channels forming a meandering closed loop are engraved on the silicon wafer with a thickness of 1 mm. The top of the silicon wafer was covered by a transparent glass plate (#7740PyrexTM) with a thickness of 0.5 mm to allow visualization of the internal thermo-hydrodynamic behavior in the PHP. The overall FP-PHP has length of 50 mm, width of 15.5 mm, and thickness of 1.5 mm, respectively. The width and height of the engraved rectangular channel is 1 mm and 0.6 mm and the hydraulic diameter is 0.75 mm. The ethanol is used for working fluid. The results show that the FP-PHP without working fluid has thermal resistance of 17 °C/W and the FP-PHP with working fluid of filling ratio of 50% has thermal resistance of 4 °C/W. In other words, the FP-PHP has effective thermal conductivity of 650 W/mK which is about 1.6 times as much as of that of the Copper ( k eff = 400 W/mK). Therefore the developed FP-PHP can be used as compact high performance electronic cooling system.

The P-type perovskite oxides La 1-x Sr x CoO 3 are a promising group of complex oxide thermoelectric (TE) materials because of its a higher Seebeck coefficient. In this paper, the La 0.95 Sr 0.05 CoO 3 thin film was prepared by spin coating. A custom-made MEMS (micro-electromechanical system) based device was used to measure the voltage output and Seebeck coefficient of the thin film. The measured Seebeck coefficient of the thin film was 350 μV/K.

This paper compares measurements made by Raman and infrared thermometry on a SOI (silicon on insulator) bent-beam thermal microactuator. Both techniques are noncontact and used to experimentally measure temperatures along the legs and on the shuttle of the thermal microactuators. Raman thermometry offers micron spatial resolution and measurement uncertainties of ±10 K; however, typical data collection times are a minute per location leading to measurement times on the order of hours for a complete temperature profile. Infrared thermometry obtains a full-field measurement so the data collection time is much shorter; however, the spatial resolution is lower and calibrating the system for quantitative measurements is challenging. By obtaining thermal profiles on the same SOI thermal microactuator, the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two techniques are assessed.

The mechanism of isolated bubble pool nucleate boiling of water is studied by a novel approach method using the developed MEMS thermal sensor. The local temperature variation beneath isolated bubble was measured using the MEMS sensor at different six wall superheats. Evaporation and dry-out of the microlayer and the rewetting of the dry-out area were obviously observed in the measured temperature variation. Wall heat transfer was numerically calculated by transient heat conduction simulation with the measured temperature as a surface boundary condition. The results showed that the microlayer evaporation transfers high heat flux of a few MW/m 2 , and dominantly contributes to the heat transport from the heating wall during the bubble growth phase. The ratio of the heat transferred from the wall to the latent heat in the bubble at the departure decreased with increasing wall superheat. In other words, the contribution of the heat transfer from the superheated liquid layer surrounding the bubble becomes important with increasing wall superheat. Moreover, the microlayer thickness was calculated by integrating the local heat flux. The derived initial thickness of the microlayer was independent from the wall superheat and became thick as distance from the nucleation site increases.

The present study was intended to examine how the condensation heat transfer, especially the drop-wise condensation, was affected by modifying the surface nature. In the present study, condensation heat transfer experiments for steam were performed by using mirror-finished copper surface, mirror-finished silicon surface and some mirror-finished silicon surfaces with very thin metal films by using spattering. The silicon surfaces with the thin metal films were created by the MEMS technology. The film- and also the drop-wise condensation were observed on the copper surface. The filmwise condensation heat flux was in good agreement with the values of the Nusselt’s equation. It was approximately one-tenth of the drop-wise condensation heat flux. The condensation on the mirror-finished silicon surface was the drop-wise condensation. The heat flux was approximately one-tenth of the drop-wise condensation heat flux on the copper surface. The condensation on silicon surfaces with thin Copper (Cu), Chromium (Cr), Lead (Pb) and Gold (Au) films were drop-wise. The condensation on silicon surfaces with thin Nickel (Ni), Titanium (Ti) and Aluminum (Al) films were filmwise.