Closed-loop electroosmotic microchannel cooling system for VLSI circuits

The increasing heat generation rates in VLSI circuits motivate research on compact cooling technologies with low thermal resistance. This paper develops a closed-loop two-phase microchannel cooling system using electroosmotic pumping for the working fluid. The design, fabrication, and open-loop performance of the heat exchanger and pump are summarized. The silicon heat exchanger, which attaches to the test chip (1 cm²), achieves junction-fluid resistance near 0.1 K/W using 40 plasma-etched channels with hydraulic diameter of 100 μm. The electroosmotic pump, made of an ultrafine porous glass frit with working volume of 1.4 cm³, achieves maximum backpressure and flowrate of 160 kPa and 7 ml/min, respectively, using 1 mM buffered de-ionized water as working fluid. The closed-loop system removes 38 W with pump power of 2 W and junction-ambient thermal resistance near 2.5 K/W. Further research is expected to strongly reduce the thermal resistance for a given heating power by optimizing the saturation temperature, increasing the pump flowrate, eliminating the thermal grease, and optimizing the heat exchanger dimensions.