Abstract
A compact, high heat flux cooling design is in development that can enable high-powered electronic systems to achieve greater thermal reliability and sustained functionality for a wide variety of applications. The design and development of this embedded cooling technology involves microfabrication of a 3-D manifold structure in silicon carbide (SiC) which is bonded to a SiC microchannel substrate to form a manifold-microchannel (MMC). The flow manifold geometries in conjunction with the embedded microchannel array provides the MMC with the ability to enable high heat transfer rates while maintaining reasonably low pressure drops, thereby minimizing the pumping power of the system. Microfabrication processes and techniques used to manufacture the MMC are presented. Modeling results are also presented to demonstrate the benefits of the MMC design over traditional cooling designs. This MMC fabricated from SiC is capable of meeting heat dissipation targets of 100 W/cm2 while maintaining thermal resistance below 2 K/W and ΔP within 1 kPa utilizing single-phase working fluid.
