Synergistic thermo-hydraulic optimization of embedded microchannels: Balancing chip cooling efficiency and pressure fluctuation resistance

Embedded microchannels cooling technology significantly reduces thermal resistance by enabling direct contact between the coolant and the heat-generating chip, exhibiting an incomparable cooling effect compared to traditional methods. However, direct contact between the coolant and the heat source results in more significant temperature fluctuations on chip and increased pressure sensitivity in the microchannel. These factors have become key factors restricting further improvement of the system's energy efficiency. This paper proposes an embedded chip cooling system that is easy to implant with great thermal performance. An embedded microchannels with secondary channels of airfoil cavity pin-fin spoiler structure (EMAT-SC), designed to further enhance the heat transfer capabilities of embedded microchannels cooling while ensuring the stability of the embedded cooling system. Through numerical simulation methods, it is determined that EMAT-SC can obtain the best heat dissipation performance when the relative width of secondary channel (α) is about 0.47 and the relative size of spoiler structure (β) is in the range of 0.28–0.56. Based on these findings, we further compared the cooling performance of the EMAT-SC with that of the embedded microchannels with rectangular structure (EMRR), the embedded microchannels with triangular rib groove structure (EMTR), and the embedded microchannels with conventional secondary channels structure (EMSC). The results confirm that EMAT-SC can not only maintain a Δp comparable to that of EMTR, but also exhibits superior heat transfer performance. The performance evaluation criterion (PEC) of EMAT-SC reaches 1.50 at Re = 783, which shows the best comprehensive thermal performance compared with the optimization schemes of the same size in recent years. This study offers valuable insights and serves as a reference for embedded cooling system solutions aimed at high heat flux density electronic equipment, particularly in synergistic thermo-hydraulic optimization of embedded microchannels.