Experimental study on a hybrid liquid/air cooling system

A high capacity hybrid liquid/air cooling system is proposed and partially tested in this paper. The cooling system is a compact sized package, including a forced thermal spreader with a small pump, a manifold minichannel air heat sink and an air mover. The forced thermal spreader can greatly reduce the spreading thermal resistance and bring more uniform temperature distribution on the top surface. The manifold minichannel air heat sink has a very low thermal resistance while keeping reasonable pressure drop. The heat is first transported from the chip to the liquid inside the forced thermal spreader, and then the liquid spreads to the surface of the heat sink, via circulating in the microchannels and minichannels inside the spreader. Following that, by uniquely designed manifold heat sink, the heat is transferred into ambient environment. The cooling system inherits the advantages from both liquid and air, and at the same time, it avoids problems from liquid cooling like size, leakage and high thermal resistance of air cooling side of the overall loop. A prototype has been manufactured and tested to verify the design