Enhanced Pool Boiling With HFE7000 Over Selectively Sintered Microchannels

As the need for efficient thermal management grows, pool boiling’s ability to dissipate high heat fluxes has gained significant interest. The objective of this work was to study the performance of pool boiling at atmospheric pressure using a dielectric fluid, HFE7000. Both plain and enhanced copper surfaces were tested, and these results were then compared to similar testing performed with water and FC-87. The enhanced surfaces utilized microchannels with porous coatings selectively located on different regions of the heat transfer surface. A maximum critical heat flux (CHF) of 41.7 W/cm² was achieved here, which translated to a 29% CHF increase in comparison to a plain chip. A maximum heat transfer coefficient (HTC) of 104.0 kW/m^2°C was also achieved, which translated to a 6-fold increase in HTC when compared to a plain copper chip. More notably, this HTC was achieved at a wall temperature of 38.4 °C. This HTC enhancement was greater than that of water and FC-87 when using the same enhanced surface. The effect of sintering location was found to have a similar effect on CHF with HFE7000 in comparison with water. The effect of microchannel size was shown to have similar effects on CHF when compared with FC-87 and water. From the results found here, it is concluded that the employment of selectively sintered open microchannels with HFE7000 has significant potential for enhanced heat dissipation in electronics cooling applications.