The high power density of emerging electronic devices is driving the transition from remote cooling, which relies on conduction and spreading, to embedded cooling, which extracts dissipated heat on-site. Two-phase microgap coolers employ the forced flow of dielectric fluids undergoing phase change in a heated channel within or between devices. Such coolers must work reliably in all orientations for a variety of applications (e.g., vehicle-based equipment), as well as in microgravity and high-g for other applications (e.g., spacecraft and aircraft). The lack of acceptable models and correlations for orientation- and gravity-independent operation has limited the use of two-phase coolers in such applications. Previous research has revealed that gravitational acceleration plays a diminishing role in establishing flow regimes and transport rates as the channel size shrinks, but there is considerable variation among the proposed microscale criteria and limited research on two-phase flows in low aspect ratio microgap channels. Reliable criteria for achieving orientation- and gravity-independent flow boiling would enable emerging systems to exploit this thermal management technique and streamline the technology development process. As a first step toward understanding the effect of gravity on two-phase microgap flow and transport, in the present effort the authors have studied the effect of evaporator orientation and mass flux on near-saturated flow boiling of HFE7100 in a 1.01 mm tall by 13.0 mm wide by 12.7 mm long microgap channel. Orientation-independence, defined as achieving similar critical heat fluxes, heat transfer coefficients, and flow regimes across evaporator orientations, was achieved for mass fluxes of 400 kg/m 2 -s and greater. The present results are compared to published criteria for achieving gravity-independence.

For improving the functionality and signal speed of electronic devices, electronic components have been miniaturized and an increasing number of elements have been packaged in the device. As a result there has been a steady rise in the amount of heat necessitated to be dissipated from the electronic device. Recently microchannel heat sinks have been emerged as a kind of high performance cooling scheme to meet the heat dissipation requirement of electronics packaging, In the present study an experimental study of subcooled flow boiling in a high-aspect-ratio, one-sided heating rectangular microchannel with gap depth of 0.52 mm and width of 5 mm was conducted with deionized water as the working fluid. In the experimental operations, the mass flux was varied from 200 to 400 kg/m 2 s and imposed heat flux from 3 to 20 W/cm 2 while the fluid inlet temperature was regulated constantly at 90 °C. The boiling curves, flow pattern and onset of nucleate boiling of subcooled flow boiling were investigated through instrumental measurements and a high speed camera. It was found that the slope of the boiling curves increased sharply once the superheat needed to initiate the onset of nucleate boiling was attained, and the slope was greater for lower mass fluxes, with lower superheat required for boiling incipience. As for the visualization images, for relatively lower mass fluxes the bubbles generated were larger and not easy to depart from the vertical upward placed narrow microchannel wall, giving elongated bubbly flow and reverse backflow. The thin film evaporation mechanism dominated the entire test section due to the elongated bubbles and transient local dryout as well as rewetting occurred. Meanwhile the initiative superheat and heat flux of onset of nucleate boiling were compared with existing correlations in the literature with good agreement.

The rapid growth of the global network infrastructure has resulted in a sharp increase in the number and size of data center facilities. Total data center power consumption now represents a significant fraction of global electricity production. To conserve natural resources, and to satisfy the cooling demands of compact, powerful electronics, thermal management strategies with high heat transfer coefficients must be employed. Two-phase liquid immersion cooling is one such strategy that has been gaining momentum in commercial cooling applications over recent years. The work discussed in this paper provides information on two different flow boiling investigations performed on vertically oriented surfaces in a small form factor server model. Two different types of surfaces — bare silicon, and silicon surfaces attached with microfinned heat sinks were tested in this study. Novec 649 dielectric fluid was used as the primary working fluid. The first investigation compares the thermal performance of parallel and impinging flow distribution systems, for different subcooling and flow rate conditions. The second investigation is on nucleation suppression in flow boiling for the parallel and impinging flow distribution systems. In this study, flow rates ranging from 0 ml/min to 1650 ml/min were tested and high-speed imaging was performed to capture the change in bubble characteristics. The resulting observations, including highest heat flux values supported without nucleation activity, are reported and discussed.

Two-phase cooling has become an increasingly attractive option for thermal management of high-heat flux electronics. Cooling channels embedded directly on the back of the heat source (chip) facilitate two-phase boiling/evaporation effectiveness, eliminating many thermal resistances generated by more traditional, remote chip-cooling approaches. Accordingly, manifold-microchannel flow paths in embedded cooling systems can allow very high heat fluxes with low junction temperatures. But, the effect of the feeding manifold design, channel geometry, and the associated shear, stagnation zones, and centripetal accelerations with varying heat flux and mass flux are not well understood. This study builds upon our previous work and elucidates effects of channel geometry, mass flux, and outlet quality on the boiling/evaporation flow regimes in a manifolded microgap channel.

Gravity-driven two-phase liquid cooling systems using flow boiling within micro-scale evaporators are becoming a game-changing solution for electronics cooling. The optimization of the system’s filling ratio can however become a challenging problem for a system operating over a wide range of cooling capacities and temperature ranges. The benefits of a liquid accumulator to overcome this difficulty are evaluated in the present paper. An experimental thermosyphon cooling system was built to cool multiple electronic components up to a power dissipation of 1800 W. A double-ended cylinder with a volume of 150 cm 3 is evaluated as the liquid accumulator for two different system volumes (associated to two different condensers). Results demonstrated that the liquid accumulator provided robust thermal performance as a function of filling ratio for the entire range of heat loads tested. In addition, the present liquid accumulator was more effective for a small volume system, 599 cm 3 , than for a large volume system, 1169 cm 3 , in which the relative size of the liquid accumulator increased from 12.8 % to 25% of the total system’s volume.

Enhanced boiling is one of the popular cooling schemes in thermal management due to its superior heat transfer characteristics. This study demonstrates the ability of copper inverse opal (CIO) porous structures to enhance pool boiling performance using a thin CIO film with a thickness of ∼ 10 μm and pore diameter of 5 μm. The microfabricated CIO film increases microscale surface roughness that in turn leads to more active nucleation sites thus improved boiling performance parameters such as heat transfer coefficient and critical heat flux compared to those of smooth Si surfaces. The experimental results for CIO film show a maximum critical heat flux of 225 W/cm 2 (at 16.2°C superheat) or about 3 times higher than that of smooth Si surface (80 W/cm 2 at 21.6°C superheat). Optical images showing bubble formation on the microporous copper surface are captured to provide detailed information of bubble departure diameter and frequency.

As the proper cooling of the electronic devices leads to significant increase in the performance, two-phase heat transfer to dielectric liquids can be of an interest especially for thermal management solutions for high power density devices with extremely high heat fluxes. In this paper, the pressure drop and critical heat flux (CHF) for subcooled flow boiling of methanol at high heat fluxes exceeding 1 kW/cm 2 is investigated. Methanol was propelled into microtubes ( ID = 265 and 150 μm) at flow rates up to 40 ml/min (mass fluxes approaching 10000 kg/m 2 -s), boiled in a portion of the microtube by passing DC current through the walls, and the two-phase pressure drop and CHF were measured for a range of operating parameters. The two-phase pressure drop for subcooled flow boiling was found to be significantly lower than the saturated flow boiling case, which can lead to lower pumping powers and more stability in the cooling systems. CHF was found to be increasing almost linearly with Re and inverse of inner diameter ( 1/ID ), while for a given inner diameter, it decreases with increasing heated length.

In this paper we reported an advanced structure, the Piranha Pin Fin ( PPF ), for microchannel flow boiling. Fluid flow and heat transfer performance were evaluated in detail with HFE7000 as working fluid. Surface temperature, pressure drop, heat transfer coefficient and critical heat flux ( CHF ) were experimentally obtained and discussed. Furthermore, microchannels with different PPF geometrical configurations were investigated. At the same time, tests for different flow conditions were conducted and analyzed. It turned out that microchannel with PPF can realize high-heat flux dissipation with reasonable pressure drop. Both flow conditions and PPF configuration played important roles for both fluid flow and heat transfer performance. This study provided useful reference for further PPF design in microchannel for flow boiling.

In this study, a new two-phase heat sink architecture is introduced that operates in two different phase change modes. At low wall superheat temperatures, the heat sink operates at the thin film evaporator mode and transitions to boiling when the wall superheat temperature is increased. This unique function is enabled through constraining the liquid and vapor phases into separate domains using capillary-controlled meniscus formed within a hierarchical 3D structure. The structure is designed to form thin layers of vertically oriented liquid films that directly evaporate into their neighboring vapor space. The dominant mode of heat transfer in this design is thin film evaporation, a very effective boiling sub-process. As the surface superheat temperature is increased and boiling starts, the capillary-controlled meniscus breaks down. A heat transfer coefficient of greater than 200 kW/m 2 K is achieved at less than 1 °C wall superheat temperature.

Hot spots and temperature non-uniformities are critical thermal characteristics of current high power electronics and future three dimensional (3D) integrated circuits (ICs). Experimental investigation to understand flow boiling heat transfer on hot spots is required for any two-phase cooling configuration targeting these applications. This work investigates hot spot cooling utilizing novel radial microchannels with embedded pin arrays representing through-silicon-via (TSV) interconnects. Inlet orifices were designed to distribute flow in radial channels in a manner that supplies appropriate amounts of coolant to high-power-density cores. Specially designed test vehicles and systems were used to produce non-uniform heat flux profiles with nominally 20 W/cm 2 background heating, 200 W/cm 2 core heating and up to 21 W/mm 2 hot spot (0.2 mm × 0.2 mm) heating to mimic a stackable eight core processor die (20 mm × 20 mm) with two hot spots on each core. The temperatures associated with flow boiling heat transfer at the hot spots were locally measured by resistance temperature detectors (RTDs) integrated between the heat source and sink. At nominal pressure and flow conditions, use of R1234ze in these devices resulted in a maximum hot spot temperature ( T hs ) of under 63 °C and average T hs of 57 °C at a hot spot power density of 21 W/mm 2 . A semi-empirical model was used to calculate the equivalent heat transfer rate around the hot spots which can provide a baseline for future studies on local thermal management of hot spots.

This work presents a new boiling heat transfer prediction method for slug flow within microchannels, which is developed and benchmarked against the results of two-phase CFD simulations. The proposed method adopts a two-zone decomposition of the flow for the sequential passage of a liquid slug and an evaporating elongated bubble. The heat transfer is modeled by assuming transient heat conduction across the liquid film surrounding an elongated bubble and sequential conduction/convection within the liquid slug. Embedded submodels for estimating important flow parameters, e.g. bubble velocity and liquid film thickness, are implemented as “building blocks”, thus making the entire modeling framework totally stand-alone. The CFD simulations are performed by utilizing ANSYS Fluent v. 14.5 and the interface between the vapor and liquid phases is captured by the built-in Volume Of Fluid algorithm. Improved schemes to compute the surface tension force and the phase change due to evaporation are implemented by means of self-developed functions. The comparison with the CFD results shows that the proposed method emulates well the bubble dynamics during evaporation, and predicts accurately the time-averaged heat transfer coefficients during the initial transient regime and the terminal steady-periodic stages of the flow.

This paper presents a comparison of Volume-of-Fluid simulation results with experiments [1] for two-phase flow and heat transfer in a micro channel. Mass transfer between the phases is modeled using a reduced-order model, requiring the definition of a time relaxation constant, r. A two-step solution procedure is used, where first a fixed temperature boundary condition is imposed at the heater to avoid overheating of the device during the initial development of the two-phase flow. After obtaining a quasi-steady-state solution this is changed to a heat flux boundary condition to determine the final solution. Results using three different values for r indicate that the value of the constant should vary throughout the domain. A final simulation where r is defined as a function of the streamwise location results in a prediction of the base temperature within 1K of the experimental result, a pressure drop within 30%, and a prediction of the location of transition from subcooled to saturated flow within 2mm.

High-fidelity simulation of flow boiling in microchannels remains a challenging problem, but the increasing interest in applications of microscale two-phase transport highlight its importance. In this paper, a volume of fluid (VOF)-based flow boiling model is proposed with computational expense-saving features that enable cost-effective simulation of two-phase flow and heat transfer in realistic geometries. The vapor and liquid phases are distinguished using a color function which represents the local volume fraction of the tracked phase. Mass conservation is satisfied by solving the transport equations for both phases with a finite-volume approach. In order to predict phase change at the liquid-vapor interface, evaporative heat and mass source terms are calculated using a novel, saturated-interface-volume phase change model that fixes the interface at the saturation temperature at each time step to achieve stability. Numerical oscillation of the evaporation source terms is thus eliminated and a non-iterative time advancement scheme can be adopted to reduce computational cost. The reference frame is set to move with the vapor slug to artificially increase the local velocity magnitude in the thin liquid film region in the relative frame, which reduces the influence of numerical errors resulting from calculation of the surface tension force, and thus suppresses the development of spurious currents. This allows use of non-uniform meshes that can efficiently resolve high-aspect-ratio geometries and flow features and significantly reduces the overall numerical expense. The proposed model is used to simulate the growth of a vapor bubble in a heated 2D axisymmetric microchannel. The bubble motion, bubble growth rate, liquid film thickness, and local heat transfer coefficient along the wall are compared against previous numerical studies.

Self-rewetting fluids (SRWFs) are non-azeotropic solutions enjoy a particular surface tension behavior — an increase in the surface tension with increasing temperature. Due to the unique property, the SRWF can spontaneously wet hotter region and enhance heat transfer. The interesting behavior makes the SRWF become the research hotspot in phase change heat transfer research field. To clarify the heat transfer characteristics of SRWF, a series of boiling experiments have been carried out by employing dilute heptanol aqueous solution as SRWF. It is found out that, the bubble size of the SRWF is much smaller than that of pure water, and the critical heat flux of SRWF is much higher than that of water, which is beneficial for application in heat pipes. To find out the heat transfer performance of SRWF in heat pipes, experimental studies are performed on oscillating heat pipe (OHP) consisting of 4 meandering turns, with heat transfer length (L) of 150 mm and inner diameter (D i ) of 1.3 mm. Compared with the water, the SRWF exhibits much better thermal performance, which indicates that SRWF is a promising and useful working liquid for the application in high efficient cooling devices with micro structure.

A pulsating heat pipe (PHP), also known as an oscillating heat pipe (OHP), is a passive thermal transport device which consists of a single meandering microchannel making multiple passes each through an evaporator and condenser. With a sufficient number of such passes, intermittent boiling of liquid slugs within each evaporator pass perturbs flow in adjacent channels leaving the device in a perpetually unstable state of oscillation. A PHP is thus distinguished operationally from a loop thermosyphon by having a motive force other than buoyancy and the ability to operate in all gravitational orientations. The most successful PHP models to date track liquid slug motion, sensible heating of the slugs, and mass transfer between liquid slugs and vapor plugs due to evaporation and condensation. However, the predictive capabilities of PHP models remain poor and the numbers assigned to evaporation and condensation heat transfer coefficients are generally not well justified by any realistic physical process. The current study applies methods consistent with state of the art prediction methods in microchannel boiling, to obtain results which predict the PHP’s heat transfer performance and the effect of gravitational orientation on performance.

The 3D (three dimensional) integration of microelectronic chips into chip stacks is an enabling technology to provide a possible path for increasing computational performance. However, 3D chip stacks require a solution to significant new thermal challenges. As a feasible solution, two-phase cooling utilizing a chip-to-chip interconnect-compatible dielectric fluid can be used. This chip-integrated micrometer scale two-phase cooling technology can be essential to fully optimize the benefits of improved integration density and modularity of 3D stacking of high performance integrated circuits (ICs) for future computing systems; but is faced with significant developmental challenges including high fidelity modeling. In the present work, an Eulerian multiphase model has been developed for simulating two-phase evaporative cooling through chip embedded microscale cavities. First, the model was used to predict the flow and heat transfer characteristics for coolant R245fa flowing through a single straight micro channel with cross section 100 × 100 um and length 10 mm. The flow is sub-cooled in the initial section of the channel and saturated in the remaining. The results were compared to experimental data available from literature, focusing on the model capability to predict the correct flow pattern, temperature profile and pressure drop. Next, the validated model was extended to the simulation of complex flow geometries expected in microprocessor chip-stacks with chip-to-chip interconnects.

Slug flow is a commonly encountered flow regime in microchannels due to the influence of surface tension and vapor confinement at small length scales. Few experimental studies have considered diabatic vapor-liquid slug flow, owing to difficulties in generating a well-controlled and repeatable slug flow regime; generation of vapor by wall heating typically leads to large, stochastic variations in the vapor bubble characteristics. To facilitate the study of flow behavior and vapor-liquid interfaces under precisely controlled conditions, a diabatic, one-component, two-phase microchannel flow was generated by separately injecting HFE-7100 vapor and liquid into a T-junction. Injection at independently controllable liquid and vapor flow rates allows the creation of vapor-liquid slug flow patterns in a downstream borosilicate microchannel of circular cross-section with a 500 μm inside diameter. The outside surface of the microchannel was coated with a 100 nm-thick layer of indium tin oxide (ITO) to generate a uniform wall heat flux via Joule heating while allowing full optical access for flow visualization. The growth of individual vapor bubbles was quantitatively visualized at different imposed heat fluxes, in terms of the percentage change in vapor bubble length along the heated microchannel. The results demonstrate the ability of the T-junction to generate diabatic, one-component, two-phase microchannel slug flow that is suitable for generating results for the validation of flow boiling models.

Two-phase liquid-vapor flow field measurements of confined jet impingement with boiling are performed using time-resolved stereo particle image velocimetry (stereo-PIV). A single circular jet of water, impinges normally from a 3.75 mm-diameter orifice onto a submerged circular heat source at an orifice-to-target spacing of 4 jet diameters. The impinging jet outflow including the vapor generated at the heat source are confined between the jet orifice plate and the bottom test section wall. Fluorescent seeding particles (10 μm in diameter) and time-resolved PIV measurements (taken at a sampling rate of 750 Hz) allow for imaging of the instantaneous interactions between the liquid and vapor structures. Liquid-phase velocity vectors within the two-phase flow field (with high vapor fractions) are presented as a function of heat flux at jet Reynolds numbers of 5,000 and 15,000 and contrasted with single-phase flow. The time-resolved measurements are used to highlight the influence of the vapor phase on the liquid flow field. It is found that bubble formation effectively blocks the developing wall-jet flow on the heated surface. The resulting liquid flow field in the confinement gap is dominated by vapor motion rather than by the entrainment from the developing wall jet.

Boiling/evaporation characteristics of a water droplet on nanoparticles-accumulated bi-porous layers produced by boiling adhesion method are evaluated. In the boiling adhesion method, the bi-porous layer is coated by dropping or spraying nanoparticles-contained solution on a heated metal substrate. By this method, it is possible to produce nanoscale of pore layer formed by accumulating the nanoparticles that have high wettability and microscale of pores formed by boiling bubbles blowing through the layer that work as vapor discharging. Visualization experiments with a high speed camera clarify that the boiling/evaporation performance is improved on the nanoparticles bi-porous layer and also a wetting limit temperature drastically increases. Furthermore, there are many cases where the life time of the droplet shortens even in a low superheated temperature regime. These results suggest that the nanoparticles bi-porous layer would contribute not only to boiling heat transfer enhancement but also to the increase in the critical heat flux.

This work examines the microscale physics of heat transfer processes in flow boiling of FC-72 in a single microchannel. Experimental results discussed in this paper provide new physical insight on the nature of heat transfer events. The study is enabled through development of a device with a composite substrate that consists of a high thermal conductivity material coated by a thin layer of a low thermal conductivity material with embedded temperature sensors. This novel arrangement enables measurement of local heat flux with a spatial resolution of 40–65 μm and a temporal resolution of 50 μs. The device generates isolated bubbles from a 300 nm in diameter artificial cavity fabricated at the center of a pulsed function micro-heater. Analysis of the temperature and heat flux data along with synchronized images of bubbles show that four mechanisms of heat transfer are active as a bubble grows and flows through the channel. These mechanisms of heat transfer are 1) microlayer evaporation, 2) interline evaporation, 3) transient conduction, and 4) micro-convection. The magnitude and time period of activation of these mechanisms of heat transfer are determined and their characteristics are discussed in details.