Co-packaged electronics with microfluidics for direct-to-package cooling

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Mechanical Engineering
• Electrical Engineering

Background:

• High heat flux and temperatures in power semiconductors necessitate advanced liquid cooling.
• Direct-to-chip (D2C) cooling offers benefits but faces fabrication hurdles.
• Current methods often require large coolant volumes and complex integration.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and evaluate a novel direct-to-package (D2P) liquid cooling strategy.
• To address the fabrication challenges associated with direct-to-chip microchannel integration.
• To demonstrate a compact, efficient, and scalable cooling solution for high-power semiconductor devices.

Main Methods:

• Embedding microchannels directly within the semiconductor package substrate.
• Implementing a D2P cooling architecture to eliminate the need for thermal interface materials.
• Testing the system's thermal performance under high heat flux conditions (up to ~625 W cm⁻²).

Main Results:

• Achieved high heat flux dissipation with minimal coolant volume (~2-4 mL).
• Demonstrated significantly lower junction temperatures (~6-7x lower than air cooling, ~2-3x lower than heat sink cooling).
• Obtained a high coefficient of performance with an effective global Nusselt number > 10.

Conclusions:

• D2P liquid cooling integration is a viable and effective solution for thermal management in high-power systems.
• This approach bypasses complex microfabrication processes required for D2C cooling.
• The D2P method offers a scalable, energy-efficient, and compact cooling alternative.