Design and characterization of a silicon base micro heat exchanger

The need for greater computational power and speed in electronic devices has led to increase the circuit density. The large density is associated with larger amounts of heat generation. Most of the time, the free convection is unable to relief the heat from the components. Forced convection in conjunction with enhanced shape of the dissipation radiators are used to accelerate the heat dissipation from the electronic components. Using the field of integrated micro-sensors and micro-actuators, called MEMS, provides us an important link between microelectronics and nonelectronics applications, and a powerful enabling tool to realize such heat exchanger devices. In this work, the fundamental issues related to design of micro heat exchangers is presented. Based on these findings, a micro-heat exchanger made of non-uniform array of micro pins on silicon is designed. Finite element modeling (FEM) is used to simulate the size and shape of pins based on two different models of convection. It was found that square shape pins in compare with other shapes like circular and rectangular pins with the same area, exhibit the higher heat transfer capability with less pressure deference through the device.