Thermal performance of a Direct-Bond-Copper Aluminum Nitride manifold-microchannel cooler

Abstract

The presence of multiple thermally resistive layers in a standard power electronics package is a hindrance to thermal dissipation. By reducing the thermal stack and incorporating microchannel cold plates into the Aluminum Nitride substrate layer, significant improvement can be made. While parallel microchannel coolers have proved their faculty for single chip cooling, manifold microchannel coolers are explored for projected thermal and fluidic advantages for multi-chip modules aimed towards Hybrid Electric vehicles. This report outlines the fabrication, testing, and experimental results for a four-chip manifold microchannel cooler with water at 25°C and 80°C and three vehicular coolant fluids at 80°C with a maximum allowable pressure drop of 5 psig. Depending on the coolant fluid used, the total thermal stack resistivities ranged from 0.316-0.628 K-cm2/W at the 5 psig pressure limit. Potential for future research and module improvement is briefly discussed.