Experimental study on two-phase heat transfer in microchannel heat sinks with hotspots

Hotspots, imposed by spatially non-uniform heat flux in a high performance circuit, increase the chip maximum junction temperature, which degrades the reliability and performance of electronic equipment. Microchannel heat sinks with two-phase convective heat transfer are effective for removing high heat flux exceeding 100 W/cm/sup 2/. Cross-linking of microchannels can be promising for achieving better temperature uniformity and more effective cooling due to the lateral fluid transport and mixing. This study experimentally investigates the impact of mass flow distribution on the chip temperature field in a multi-channel heat sink. Furthermore, the performance of two microchannel heat sinks is compared with different configurations: a regular microchannel heat sink and a cross-linked microchannel heat sink.