Cross-Verification of Thermal Characterization of a Microcooler

Abstract

The thermal behavior of a microcooler has been investigated using two different measurement methods to verify their feasibility. On the one hand structure function derived from the thermal measurements was used, while on the other hand, characterization was done with a heat-flux sensor array. The measurement sample was a square nickel plate microcooler holding 128 microchannels in radial arrangement. In our previous studies it was attached to a power transistor which was used as a dissipator and a temperature sensor. The thermal transient response to a dissipation step of the transistor was recorded in the measurement. The measured transients (cooling curves) were transformed into structure functions from which the partial thermal resistance corresponding to the cooling assembly was identified. In the current study the measurement setup was completed by a heat-flux sensor inbetween the dissipator and the microcooler to be able to verify the results extracted via structure functions. In this way we could compare the heat-transfer coefficient (HTC) values obtained from the identified thermal resistances to those calculated directly from the measured heat-flux values. Good matching of the HTC values resulting from the two different methods was found.