Perspiration Nano-Patch for Hot Spot Thermal Management

A novel cooling scheme utilizing evaporative cooling for an ultra-thin, spatially confined liquid film is described for meeting the challenge of hot spot thermal management aiming at locally removing heat fluxes in excess of 200 W/cm². This work presents the conceptual system design and results of performance calculations supporting the feasibility of the proposed cooling scheme. The phase change heat transfer is one of the most efficient means of heat transfer due to an advantage offered by the significant latent heat of vaporization of liquids. Fundamentally, evaporation could be a much more efficient method of heat removal as compared to boiling if certain conditions are met. Theoretically, we demonstrate that if a stable monolayer of liquid can be maintained on the surface and fully dry sweeping gas (e.g., air) is blown at high velocity above this liquid monolayer one can dissipate heat fluxes of the order of several hundreds of Watts per cm². We also show that a more volatile FC-72 can outperform water in evaporative cooling using stable liquid microfilms.