THERMAPOWER

Thermal Management of High Power Microsystems Using Multiphase Flows

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Increased functionality and power consumption of microdevices and high power electronics has come at a cost: power dissipation and heating. This heat must be dissipated to ensure reliable operation of such devices in both earthly and reduced gravity environments (eg space industry), without adversely affecting their performance. With a highly competitive world market, worth tens of billions of Euros, it is imperative for EU to gain a competitive position in this field (currently led by USA and China). The proposed work is an important step towards developing novel, efficient and reliable thermal management via phase-change through international collaboration between top research groups in EU, USA and China. These include 12 experienced researchers from University of Edinburgh, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, University of Maryland and University of Nottingham. These partners have complementary expertise in microfabrication, experimental techniques, analytical and numerical modelling. The collaboration enables knowledge transfer and access to unique facilities such as those at NASA, Intel, Hua Wei and IBM, reinforcing the research standing of EU in this crucial technological area. It also offers an opportunity for training 20 early stage researchers in state-of-art experimental and modelling techniques. The collaboration exploits and extends ongoing studies in two-phase flow and heat transfer by the partners. These comprise studies in pool boiling, evaporation, flow boiling and condensation, adapting and optimising these for thermal management of micro/optoelectronics systems. The objective is towards developing an integrated cooling system within electronic microdevices interfaced with an external circuit to take advantage of strengths in high energy efficiencies of phase-change. Potential applications cover devices such as cellphones, refrigeration systems, supercomputing clusters and space equipment.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Thermal management is a hot topic in microelectronic and optoelectronic devices. An EU-funded project is working on integrating an innovative cooling system that unlike conventional solutions that use single-phase liquids or gases involves two-phase flows.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

An ever-present challenge in microelectronic devices is to make sure they will stay within their safe operating limits in terms of power. Generally, the more power that is involved, the more power dissipation there will be and thus a rise in temperature. The heat generated must be dissipated to improve reliability and prevent premature failure.

The EU-funded project 'Thermal management of high power microsystems using multiphase flows' (THERMAPOWER) is taking important steps towards developing novel, efficient and reliable thermal management by conducting extensive studies into two-phase flows and heat transfer. The key topics under research include pool boiling, evaporation, flow boiling and condensation.

Scientists will experimentally investigate two-phase flows in tubes and channels with a variable surface patterning. Through novel imaging techniques, they will characterise the two-phase flow regimes near the boiling nucleation with structured or coated surfaces.

Work also includes quantifying condensation and evaporation heat fluxes for surfaces with different degrees of wetting in microchannels with different cross-sections. The flow instabilities associated with two-phase flows will also be quantified.

To date, scientists have produced new insight into flow instabilities during flow boiling in single- and multi-channel heat sinks. Results have demonstrated that instabilities can be recorded when measuring pressure drops or temperature across channels. Through a novel thermal imaging technique, scientists have revealed the flow structure during flow boiling.

Work was also geared towards studying the evaporation of single sessile drops and bubble growth. Scientists proved the existence of hydrothermal instabilities, as well as of a thin wetting film at the base of growing bubbles during evaporation. Furthermore, they have produced the first-ever model to describe the 3D nature of the phase-change process during the evaporation of wetting drops on heated surfaces.

THERMAPOWER is a collaboration between China, the EU and the United States. Project findings should have important implications for devices as diverse as cell phones, refrigeration systems, supercomputing clusters and space equipment.