A study of boiling heat transfer mechanisms in micro-fluidic systems

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As today's electronic components are required to perform tasks at a faster rate, high-powered integrated circuits have been produced in order to meet this need. These high-speed circuits are expected to generate heat fluxes that will cause the circuit to exceed its allowable temperature. Microchannel heat transfer governs the performance of the microchannel heat sink, which is a recent technology aimed at managing the stringent thermal requirements of today's high-end electronics. Micro-heat sinks also have many industrial applications including micro-cooling devices, high conversion nuclear reactors, chemical processing, micro-fluidic devices, as well as micro-power-plants-on-chips. The principal objective of this research is to investigate the heat transfer and fluid flow phenomena affecting the performance of micro heat sinks. This proposal focuses particularly on: 1- developing physics-based models based on experiments for the flow and heat transfer phenomena in microchannels; 2- investigating the effect of critical heat flux on the stable operation of heat sinks; 3- modeling the mechanisms of boiling heat transfer and those leading to dry out phenomena; 4- developing passive planar micromixers, to be either implemented in a complete microfluidic system, such as a micro cooling system or as a stand-alone device. The proposed research should yield considerable insight into advanced and innovative designs of micro heat devices not available in the open literature. The outcome of the proposed research will be used in the thermal management of compact electronics, and will lead to the development of power-plants-on-chips, which will broaden the market of portable electronics, robotics, and small vehicles. It will also result in the generation of new basic knowledge regarding heat transfer and fluid flow related to microsystems, which will be published in the open literature, and will assist in training highly qualified personnel.