High-Aspect Ratio Microtube Cold Plate for Dense Electronics Cooling
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing cooling technologies, such as air cooling and conventional liquid cooling, struggle to effectively manage the increasing heat generated by modern electronic components, leading to overheating, performance degradation, and potential component failure.
Innovation Solution
The use of cold plates with high-aspect ratio microtubes that facilitate heat transfer through a plurality of microtubes, where a coolant absorbs heat from the tube walls via convection, enhancing heat transfer efficiency and capacity.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of energy
If conventional air cooling or liquid cooling methods are used, then cooling capability is provided, but heat transfer efficiency is insufficient to manage increasing heat from modern electronic components
Solution Approach 1:
The cooling system divides the heat transfer surface into numerous microtubes with diameters between 1-100 micrometers, creating many parallel heat transfer pathways. This segmentation increases the total surface area for heat transfer while maintaining compact dimensions, directly addressing the insufficient heat transfer efficiency of conventional cooling methods.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention transitions from conventional two-dimensional heat sink surfaces to three-dimensional microtube structures with high aspect ratios (length-to-diameter ratios). This dimensional transformation creates extensive internal surface area within a compact volume, dramatically increasing heat transfer capacity without proportionally increasing the external footprint.
2Productivity
If the number of heat-generating components is increased to improve productivity, then device performance increases, but heat management becomes more difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The microtube cold plate serves multiple functions simultaneously: it acts as a structural support, an electrical insulator, and a heat transfer medium. The unified microtube structure can be thermally coupled to multiple heat-generating components, allowing a single component design to manage heat from multiple sources, thereby supporting increased device performance without proportionally increasing heat management complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention utilizes phase change parameters of the coolant (liquid-to-vapor transition) within the microtubes to achieve highly efficient heat transfer. By optimizing the phase change conditions and microtube dimensions, the system can effectively manage heat from multiple components through the latent heat absorption during phase transition, enabling high productivity with improved heat management.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The high-aspect ratio microtubes provide a significantly higher surface area to volume ratio, improving heat transfer rates and cooling capacity compared to conventional methods, effectively managing heat from multiple heat-generating components.
Implementation Method 1
a coolant absorbs heat from the tube walls via convection
Implementation Method 2
The high-aspect ratio microtubes provide a significantly higher surface area to volume ratio, improving heat transfer rates
Data Source
AI summary
A cooling system has a cooling loop for cooling one or more heat-generating components. A pump circulates a coolant through the cooling loop. An internally cooled cold plate defines a major surface and a plurality of microtubes extending from an open first end to an opposed open second end. The plurality of microtubes is fluidically coupled with the pump. The internally cooled cold plate is configured to transfer heat received through the major surface to the coolant as the coolant passes through the plurality of microtubes. The plurality of microtubes can provide a ratio of exposed surface area available for heat transfer to volume (SA/V) greater than about 200 m−1. The plurality of microtubes can extend through one or more of an alloy of copper, an alloy of aluminum, and a thermally conductive composite. A heat radiator rejects heat from the coolant to another medium.