Performance study of a biomimetic leaf vein microchannel coupled jet impingement system for high-power chip thermal management

Abstract

With the rapid development of high-power integrated circuits, traditional air cooling fails to meet thermal management demands. Liquid cooling has emerged as a key solution. In this paper, based on research related to microchannel and jet heat transfer technology, a novel approach to addressing the thermal management challenges posed by high-power chips is proposed. The approach involves the design of a new type of lotus leaf vein microchannel coupled jet impingement heat transfer system with diversion channels (DLJ-MCHS), which improves the structure of the lotus leaf vein network by introducing diversion channels. The study applies numerical simulation methods to cool an electronic chip with an 800 W heating power using mineral oil as the coolant and systematically analyses the influence laws of parameters such as the shape of the diversion channel, the spacing between the diversion channels, and the height of the microchannels on the flow heat transfer performance of the DLJ-MCHS. The study’s findings indicate that the circular diversion channel exhibits optimal performance in heat transfer enhancement with minimal change in pressure drop, achieving an 800 W chip maximum temperature reduction of up to 8.47 %, a thermal resistance decrease of 14.24 %, and a temperature difference reduction of 20.50 % compared to the basic bionic structure. It is observed that the chip temperature decreases gradually as the channel spacing narrows. Increasing the height of the microchannels helps to reduce the pressure drop and chip temperature, but the enhancement tends to diminish as the height of the microchannels increases. The study proposes a novel idea and optimization scheme for the thermal design of high-power chips, which has important theoretical significance and practical application value.