Performance Evaluation of Liquid 3D Chip Cooling Systems Under Non-Uniform Power Density: Effects of Inlet and Plenum Configurations

Thermal management of microelectronic devices is one of the most important challenges and thresholds in high performance and portable electronic industries. With the increase in the power density and heat dissipation in electronic equipment, the needs for an efficient thermal management system have made the liquid cooling techniques inevitable in recent years. Effective design of the cooling components and flow passages become more important when multilayer substrates (3D chip cooling systems) are in concern. Interlayer heat transfer through the conduction mechanism and nonuniform power density make the cooling system design for the 3D chips a very challenging task. In this research, the temperature distribution of a 3D chip, cooled by liquid flows in microchannels, has been studied numerically using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The effects of various important parameters such as direction and location of inlet and outlet of the cooling water, plenum geometry, cooling liquid flow rate, and non-uniform heat flux on the thermal performance of the cooling system have been analyzed and discussed.