Fluid flow and heat transfer in liquid cooled foam heat sinks for electronic packages

In this paper, the fluid flow and heat transfer of liquid cooled foam heat sinks (FHSs) were experimentally investigated. Eight Open-celled copper foam materials with two pore densities of 60 and 100 PPI (pores per inch) and four porosities varying from 0.6 to 0.9 were bonded onto copper base plates to form the FHSs, which were then assembled on flip chip BGA packages (FBGAs) with a common thermal grease as the thermal interface material. A liquid cooling test loop was established to obtain the pressure drops and overall thermal resistances. For the four 60 PPI FHSs, the one with the lowest porosity of 0.6 is found to possess the lowest thermal resistance level with the largest pressure drop. Generally the FHSs with 100 PPI had slightly lower thermal resistances at the same flowrates but much larger pressure drops than those with 60 PPI. In the overall performance assessment, the thermal resistances of the FHSs are plotted against the pressure drop and the pump power, together with a microchannel heat sink of similar unit cell scale and structural dimensions. The thermal resistances of the FHS with a porosity of 0.8 and pore density of 60 PPI were identified to be the lowest among all the FHSs, which outperformed the microchannel heat sink at large pressure drop and pump power. The reduced heat sink thermal resistance and Nusselt numbers for the present FHSs and microchannel heat sink are also presented and compared with the FHS reported in the literature.