A study of the heat transfer characteristics of the micro-channel heat sink

Micro-channels are generally regarded as an effective method for the heat transfer in electronic products, and much effort has been put into improving their capacities. At the same time, carbon nanotubes have shown great potential in the field of heat transfer. This paper focuses on the microchannel heat sinks combined with carbon nanotubes. A series of 3D models had been created, and the heat transfer characteristics were studied. Two kinds of numerical model were carried out by using Fluent. One model contained the whole micro-channel cooler structure, and the other was a simplified model with only one channel taken into simulation. A comparison of results by the two models indicates a 19.5% variation in the maximum temperature on the fins. Furthermore, five micro-channel cooler structures were constructed with different fin widths. The simulation results showed that with the decrease in the fin width, heat transfer ability was improved. This is attributed to the anisotropic thermal conductivity of the fin arrays.