A finite element analysis (FEA) approach is developed and used to efficiently evaluate and optimize the boiling performance of longitudinal rectangular plate fin heat sinks, including the explicit dependence of fin spacing on boiling heat transfer coefficients and CHF. Polished silicon heat sinks are shown to dissipate nearly five times the CHF limit of the unfinned base area and outperform comparable aluminum heat sinks by a factor of two. For optimum heat sink geometries, over the parameter ranges explored, fin thickness is found to be approximately equal to the fin spacing, and the relationship between optimum thickness and spacing is demonstrated to be relatively insensitive to fin thermal conductivity. Results suggest that even greater performance enhancements may be gained with appropriately-selected advanced materials.

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