Assessment of High-Heat-Flux Thermal Management Schemes

This paper explores the recent research developments in high-heat-flux thermal management. Cooling schemes such as pool boiling, detachable heat sinks, channel flow boiling, microchannel and mini-channel heat sinks, jet-impingement, and sprays, are discussed and compared relative to heat dissipation potential, reliability, and packaging concerns. It is demonstrated that, while different cooling options can be tailored to the specific needs of individual applications, system considerations always play a paramount role in determining the most suitable cooling scheme. It is also shown that extensive fundamental electronic cooling knowledge has been amassed over the past two decades. Yet there is now a growing need for hardware innovations rather than perturbations to those fundamental studies. An example of these innovations is the cooling of military avionics, where research findings from the electronic cooling literature have made possible the development of a new generation of cooling hardware which promise order of magnitude increases in heat dissipation compared to today’s cutting edge avionics cooling schemes.