Boundary Conditions and Integrated Sensors in Microchannel Convective Heat Transfer

A microchannel heat sink, integrated with pressure and temperature microsensors, is fabricated to study convective boiling under uniform heat flux boundary condition. Utilizing a wafer bond and etch back technology, the heat source, temperature and pressure sensors are separated from the fluid flow by a membrane only 1.5μm in thickness; thus, allowing good control of the thermal boundary conditions. Temperature and pressure distributions for various power levels and flow rates are measured while, simultaneously, the flow patterns are recorded. Single-phase flow results, compared with numerical simulations, confirm that the heat flux boundary condition is indeed nearly uniform. The sensor arrays, particularly for two-phase flow, provide the spatial and temporal dependence of both the temperature and pressures fields.