A review on design alteration in microchannel heat sink for augmented thermohydraulic performance

Abstract

The present trend of miniaturization in various electronic devices has caused higher heat generation per unit area. Dissipation of highly concentrated heat from these devices is essentially required to ensure their safe and prolonged use. Therefore, consistent efforts are made to upgrade the cooling technology to meet the current requirements. The microchannel heat sink (MCHS) has gained much attention due to its inherent property of a higher surface area-to-volume ratio. The thermo-hydraulic performance of MCHS has been further improved by several methods including active and passive techniques. In this work, a comprehensive review of the literature is presented to discuss the prominent design modifications done in the MCHS to enhance the heat dissipation capacity using single-phase fluid flow. It was commonly observed that heat transfer enhancement usually occurs at the cost of pressure drop penalty and other flow complications; therefore, relevant parameters have been discussed to evaluate the design’s efficacy.

Keywords

• Single phase fluid flow
• Channel classification
• Microchannel heat sink
• Micro pin fin
• Thermohydraulic performance