Convection Heat Transfer in Electronic Equipment Cooling

To maintain the best possible thermal environment in electronic packages, the engineer must establish the most efficient path for heat transfer from the electronic devices to an external cooling agent. The path is typically subdivided into internal and external components, representing, respectively, heat transfer by conduction through different materials and interfaces separating the devices from the package surface and heat transfer by convection from the surface to the coolant. Depending on the scale and speed of the electronic circuits, as well as on constraints imposed by nonthermal considerations, the coolant may be a gas or a liquid and heat transfer may be by natural, forced, or mixed convection or, in the case of a liquid, by pool or forced convection boiling. In this paper a comprehensive review of convection cooling options is provided.