Study on the performance of wavy microchannel heat sink with staggered inlets and outlets

The substrate temperature gradient of electronic devices not only affects their performance, but also reduces their reliability and service life. In order to get a more uniform temperature distribution on the bottom of a microchannel, a wavy microchannel heat sink with staggered inlets and outlets was proposed. With water as the coolant, numerical simulation was adopted to explore the reinforcing impact of the wavy sidewall structure on the temperature uniformity and the heat transfer of the staggered inlets and outlets microchannel unit when the Reynolds number varies at 102–615. The findings reveal that with the increase of the wave amplitude and Reynolds number, as well as the decrease of the wavelength, the intensity and number of Dean vortices increase, and heat transfer of the wavy microchannel with the staggered inlets and outlets is improved. In comparison with the traditional straight microchannel unit with the co-current mode, the temperature difference on the bottom of the wavy microchannel unit with the staggered inlets and outlets is reduced by (90.1–94.5) %.