Fluid-to-Fluid Spot-to-Spreader (F2/S2) Hybrid Heat Sink for Integrated Chip-Level and Hot Spot-Level Thermal Management

Abstract

An innovative heat sink design aimed at meeting both the hot spot and large background heat flux requirements of next generation integrated circuits is presented. The heat sink design utilizes two separate unmixed fluids to meet the cooling requirements of the chip with one fluid acting as a fluidic spreader dedicated to cooling the hot spots only, while the second fluid serves as both a coolant for the background heat fluxes and an on-chip regenerator for the hot spot fluid. In this paper the conceptual heat sink design is presented and its theoretical capabilities are explored through optimization calculations and computational fluid dynamics simulations. It has been shown that through close coupling of the two thermal fluids the proposed hybrid heat sink can theoretically remove hot spot heat fluxes on the order of 1 kW/cm2 and background heat fluxes up to 100 W/cm2 in one compact and efficient package. Additionally, it has been shown that the F2/S2 design can handle these thermal loads with a relatively small pressure drop penalty, within the realm of existing micropump technologies. Finally, the feasibility of the F2/S2 design was demonstrated experimentally by modifying a commercially available, air-cooled aluminum heat sink to accommodate an integrated hot spot cooling system and fluidic spreader. The results of these experiments, where the prototype heat sink was able to remove hot spot heat fluxes of up to 365 W/cm2 and background heat fluxes of up to 20 W/cm2, are reported.