Fabrication and Testing of Microstructure Heat Exchangers for Thermal Applications

For a couple of years, microstructure heat exchangers have been numerically simulated, designed, manufactured and tested at the Institute for Micro Process Engineering of the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. The microstructure heat exchangers consist of single metal foils which are connected by a diffusion bonding process to form a nearly monolithic body. The number of integrated microchannels is in the order of several hundreds to several thousands. This internal numbering-up leads to a sufficiently low pressure drop. The devices have an extremely high heat transfer to volume ratio of about 30,000 m² · m⁻³ which makes it possible to transfer thermal power in the range of several kilowatt within a volume of some centimeters cubed only.