Cooling of next generation computer chips: Parametric study for single- and two-phase cooling

The following study focuses on the scalability of single- and two-phase cooling techniques to address the cooling constraints and requirements of future vertically integrated chips. Water and refrigerant R134a were considered for single- and two-phase cooling respectively during simulations. A parametric study based on fin height, fin width and channel width of multi-microchannel heat removal structures was conducted for different power maps using an LTCM developed in-house code. Observations were made on junction temperature, pressure drop, and heat transfer coefficient behavior. Cooling structures with a fin height of 150 μm, fin width of 50 μm, and channel width of 100 μm showed sufficient cooling performance for homogeneous heat fluxes with 100 W/cm2 hot spots for both cooling techniques.