Unlocking the Potential of Integrated Cooling and Power Delivery in Multi-chip Power Electronics Packages with Triply Periodic Minimal Surfaces (TPMS)

Abstract

As power density demands in power electronics escalate, integrated power delivery with embedded fluidic cooling has gained interest to leverage the exceptional characteristics of wide bandgap semiconductor devices. However, application-specific constraints—such as dielectric coolants, fewer package layers, and lack of top-sided access for fluid ports—significantly limit the potential of this technology, leading to excessive fluid heating and reduced cooling effectiveness. These challenges become even more pronounced with homogeneous heat transfer enhancement structures, which lack the ability to provide spatial control of flow patterns. To unlock the potential of integrated cooling and power delivery, we proposed a hybrid architecture combining triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS) with micropillars to target local hot spots and enhance flow mixing where most needed. The cold plates were additively fabricated using binder jetting technique, and computational models were experimentally validated to unveil underlying physics, examining the unique flow structures generated by the combination of TPMS and pillars under diagonal flow. The swirling motion through a network of high-curvature channels intensified local vorticity, leading to disrupted thermal boundary layers and enhanced convective heat transfer. Unlike conventional micropillar-based cooling, which suffers from a downstream decline in local Nusselt number (Nu), the hybrid design expands the effective heat removal area by sustaining a positive downstream Nu gradient in the hot spot region. Overall, the hybrid architecture achieves a 17.9–57.0% increase in the average Nu compared to the traditional solution, offering promising potential to meet increasing power density demands with reduced cooling power overhead.