Experimental and Computational Characterization of a Heat Sink Tester

With the continuing industry trends towards smaller, faster and higher power devices, thermal management continues to be extremely important in the development of electronics. In this era of high heat fluxes, air cooling still remains the primary cooling solution in desktops mainly due to its cost. The primary goal of a good thermal design is to ensure that the chip can function at its rated frequency or speed while maintaining the junction temperature within the specified limit. The first and foremost step in measurement of thermal resistance and hence thermal characterization is accurate determination of junction temperature. Use of heat sinks as a thermal solution is well documented in the literature. Previously, the liquid cooled cold plate tester was studied using a different approach and it was concluded that the uncertainty in heat transfer coefficient was within 8% with errors in appropriate parameters, this result was supported by detailed uncertainty analysis based on Monte-Carlo simulations. However, in that study the tester was tested computationally. In this paper, testing and characterization of a heat sink tester is presented. Heat sinks were tested according to JEDEC JESD 16.1 standard for forced convection. It was observed that the error between computational and experimental values of thermal resistances was 10% for the cases considered.