Applicability of Minichannel Cooling Fins to the Next Generation Power Devices as a Single-Phase-Flow Heat Transfer Device

Abstract

The heat transfer characteristics of copper minichannel-finned heat sinks are experimentally investigated in order to clarify their applicability as a single-phase flow cooling device for next generation power devices. The influence of the channel width and the fin thickness are evaluated in detail. In particular, the minichannel-finned heat sink having a channel width of 0.3 mm and a fin thickness of 1.0 mm achieves a heat transfer performance of approximately 70,000~9,5000 W/m 2 K at 300 W/cm 2 even in a single-phase flow heat transfer regime. Simple estimation proves that single-phase-flow heat transfer with the minichannel-fins heat sink is able to sufficiently cool future power devices under the allowable pumping power conditions.