Heat transfer modules for cooling electronics packages

The Thermal Management Group of the Packaging Research Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology is developing radically new and highly efficient cooling technologies suitable for on-the-spot and on-demand use on individual chips, MCMs and electronic packages. Our research efforts focus on the development of thermal management hardware that will target these heat flux levels in a low-profile, compact, reliable and inexpensive package. The cooling technologies are based manipulation of miniature single-phase jets using impulse actuators. The group is also developing two-phase versions for high heat flux applications. The technology can be applied as an open system (e.g. as a clip-on device for existing chips) or as a self-contained, integrated heat transfer module. The scalability, connectivity, and stackability of such modules could potentially provide significant improvements over current air-cooled thermal management schemes.