Design of a Fractal Tree-Like Microchannel Net Heat Sink for Microelectronic Cooling

Abstract

In this paper, a numerical simulation is carried to study pressure drop and heat transfer in a fractal tree-like microchannel net heat sink of 10mm×12.5mm×0.5mm in dimensions. The numerical result is obtained by solving three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations and energy equation, taking into consideration conjugate heat transfer in the microchannel walls. A comparison of fractal tree-like microchannel net heat sink with 6 branch levels to parallel microchannels heat sink, with respect to the pressure drop, thermal resistance and temperature uniformity, was also performed under the condition of the same heat sink dimensions. The results indicates that for a mass flow rate of water less than 0.00175kg/s, the fractal tree-like microchannel is much better than parallel channel heat sink with respect to all of three aspects. Therefore, the fractal tree-like microchannels net heat sink using water as the coolant is promising to be used in the future electronic cooling industry.