SBIR Phase II: Miniature Cooling System for Laptop Computers

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第二阶段项目将为笔记本电脑开发一种紧凑、轻便和无噪音的冷却系统。该产品将是一种空气冷却的微通道散热器，通道内集成了一个电动流体动力(EHD)泵。研究的重点将是开发一种具有大型并行微通道阵列的散热器，以提供最佳的热阻。第二个主要开发领域将是EHD空气流动装置；将使用对电晕风技术的改进来提供通过散热器的空气流动。其他任务包括电源开发、系统集成、制造工艺开发和可靠性改进。随着笔记本电脑速度和性能的提高，微处理器中的功率密度也会增加，它们会散热更多。拟议的项目解决了这样一个事实，即笔记本电脑冷却系统将被要求在将微处理器保持在85摄氏度以下的同时，散热超过40瓦。在商业上，拟议的冷却系统是为不断增长的笔记本电脑市场开发的。2007年将售出超过2.35亿台个人电脑；其中约三分之一或约8000万台将是笔记本电脑。该产品的小尺寸和出色的散热能力将使笔记本电脑制造商能够采用更快的处理器，同时减少其产品的整体尺寸和重量。除了冷却应用外，电液压泵技术还可用作精确控制少量液体的一种手段。这可以作为糖尿病患者的胰岛素输送机制，也可以用于所谓的芯片实验室

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will develop a compact, light-weight and noiseless cooling system for laptop computers. The product will be an air cooled, micro-channel heat sink with an electro-hydrodynamic (EHD) pump integrated within the channels. Research will focus on the development of a heat sink with a large parallel array of micro-channels to provide optimal thermal resistance. The second major area of development will be the EHD air flow device; a modification to the corona wind technique will be used to provide air flow through the heat sink. Other tasks include power supply development, system integration, manufacturing process development and reliability improvement. As the speed and performance of laptop computers increases, the power density in the microprocessors rises and they dissipate more heat. The proposed project addresses the fact that laptop computer cooling systems will be required to dissipate upwards of 40 Watts while maintaining the microprocessor below 85 degrees C.Commercially, the proposed cooling system is being developed for the growing laptop computing market. More than 235 million personal computers will be sold in 2007; roughly one-third of which or about 80 million will be laptop computers. The proposed product's small size and excellent heat dissipation capabilities will enable laptop computer manufacturers to incorporate faster processors while simultaneously reducing the overall size and weight of their products. Besides cooling applications, electro-hydrodynamic pumping technology can be used as a means of providing precise control of small amounts of liquid. This has application as an insulin delivery mechanism for diabetics and in the so-called laboratory-on-a-chip