Heat transfer improvement in microchannel heat sink by topology design and optimization for high heat flux chip cooling

To meet the demand of ever-increasing heat flux of electronic chips, the influence of topology structure of microchannels on its heat transfer performance in chip cooling was investigated in this paper. First, four topologies were designed, including ternate veiny, lateral veiny, snowflake shaped and spider netted. Then fluid-thermal coupling numerical simulations were employed and the results showed that the spider netted microchannel yield the best heat transfer performance among the proposed structures. Furthermore, the geometrical parameters of the spider netted microchannel were optimized. Finally, the straight and spider netted microchannel were made by 3D printing technique and the experiment was conducted. The experimental results indicated that the heat transfer performance of the spider netted microchannel was better than the straight, the difference of the maximum heat source temperature reached 9.9 °C in the heat flux of 100 W/cm², and get larger and larger with the increase of heat flux. It was concluded that the topology structure of microchannel had a significant impact on its heat transfer performance, especially in high heat flux.