scholarly journals Thin Film Evaporation Using Nanoporous Membranes for Enhanced Heat Transfer

Author(s):  
Rong Xiao ◽  
Shalabh C. Maroo ◽  
Evelyn N. Wang

Recent advancements in integrated circuits demand the development of novel thermal management schemes that can dissipate ultra-high heat fluxes with high heat transfer coefficients. Previous study demonstrated the potential of thin film evaporation on micro/nanostructured surfaces [1–11]. Theoretical calculations indicate that heat transfer coefficients on the order of 106 W/m2K and heat fluxes of 105 W/cm2 can be achievable with water [1, 5–6]. However, in previous experimental setup, the coolant has to propagate across the surface which limits the increase in heat flux and the heat transfer coefficient, while adding complexity to the system design. This work aims to decouple the propagation of the coolant from the evaporation process through a novel experimental configuration. Thin nanoporous membranes of 13 mm diameter were used where a metal layer was deposited on the top surface to serve as a resistance heater. Liquid was supplied from the bottom of the membrane, driven through the nanopores by capillary force, and evaporated from the top surface. Heat transfer coefficient over 104 W/m2K was obtained with isopropyl alcohol (IPA) as the coolant, which is only two orders of magnitude smaller than the theoretical limit. This work offers insights into optimal experimental designs towards achieving kinetic limits of heat transfer for thin film evaporation based thermal management solutions.

Author(s):  
Rong Xiao ◽  
Evelyn N. Wang

The increasing performance of integrated chips has introduced a growing demand for new thermal management technologies. While various thermal management schemes have been studied, thin film evaporation promises high heat dissipation rates (1000 W/cm2) with low thermal resistances. However, methods to form a thin liquid film including jet impingement and sprays have challenges associated with achieving the desired film thickness. In this work, we investigated novel microstructures to control the thickness of the thin film where the liquid is driven by capillarity. Micropillar arrays with diameters ranging from 2 μm to 10 μm, spacings between pillars ranging from 5 μm to 10 μm, and heights of 4.36 μm were studied. A semi-analytical model was developed to predict the propagation rate of the liquid film, which was validated with experiments. The heat transfer performance was investigated on the micropillar arrays with microfabricated heaters and temperature sensors. The behavior of the thin liquid film under varying heat fluxes was studied. This work demonstrates the potential of micro- and nanostructures to dissipate high heat fluxes via thin film evaporation.


Author(s):  
M. Ghajar ◽  
J. Darabi

A number of analytical and numerical models have been developed by various researchers to predict the behavior of loop heat pipes (LHP). However, none of those models use the thin-film evaporation principles in the capillary structures to evaluate the local evaporative heat transfer coefficients. In this work, principles of the thin film evaporation are applied in a submodel and combined with our previously developed loop solver model to more accurately simulate the performance of a flat micro loop heat pipe. The resulting code predicts the heat removal capability, surface temperature, and local and average heat transfer coefficients at various applied heat loads. The results indicate that extremely high cross-sectionally averaged evaporative heat transfer coefficients can be achieved. The modeling results are verified by experimental data.


Author(s):  
Todd M. Bandhauer ◽  
Taylor A. Bevis

The principle limit for achieving higher brightness of laser diode arrays is thermal management. State of the art laser diodes generate heat at fluxes in excess of 1 kW cm−2 on a plane parallel to the light emitting edge. As the laser diode bars are packed closer together, it becomes increasingly difficult to remove large amounts of heat in the diminishing space between neighboring diode bars. Thermal management of these diode arrays using conduction and natural convection is practically impossible, and, therefore, some form of forced convective cooling must be utilized. Cooling large arrays of laser diodes using single-phase convection heat transfer has been investigated for more than two decades by multiple investigators. Unfortunately, either large fluid temperature increases or very high flow velocities must be utilized to reject heat to a single phase fluid, and the practical threshold for single phase convective cooling of laser diodes appears to have been reached. In contrast, liquid-vapor phase change heat transport can occur with a negligible increase in temperature and, due to a high enthalpy of vaporization, at comparatively low mass flow rates. However, there have been no prior investigations at the conditions required for high brightness edge emitting laser diode arrays: >1 kW cm−2 and >10 kW cm−3. In the current investigation, flow boiling heat transfer at heat fluxes up to 1.1 kW cm−2 was studied in a microchannel heat sink with plurality of very small channels (45 × 200 microns) using R134a as the phase change fluid. The high aspect ratio channels (4.4:1) were manufactured using MEMS fabrication techniques, which yielded a large heat transfer surface area to volume ratio in the vicinity of the laser diode. To characterize the heat transfer performance, a test facility was constructed that enabled testing over a range of fluid saturation temperatures (15°C to 25°C). Due to the very small geometric features, significant heat spreading was observed, necessitating numerical methods to determine the average heat transfer coefficient from test data. This technique is crucial to accurately calculate the heat transfer coefficients for the current investigation, and it is shown that the analytical approach used by many previous investigations requires assumptions that are inadequate for the very small dimensions and heat fluxes observed in the present study. During the tests, the calculated outlet vapor quality exceeded 0.6 and the base heat flux reached a maximum of 1.1 kW cm−2. The resulting experimental heat transfer coefficients are found to be as large a 58.1 kW m−2 K−1 with an average uncertainty of ±11.1%, which includes uncertainty from all measured and calculated values, required assumptions, and geometric discretization error from meshing.


Author(s):  
Solomon Adera ◽  
Rishi Raj ◽  
Evelyn N. Wang

Thermal management is increasingly becoming a bottleneck for a variety of high power density applications such as integrated circuits, solar cells, microprocessors, and energy conversion devices. The performance and reliability of these devices are usually limited by the rate at which heat can be removed from the device footprint, which averages well above 100 W/cm2 (locally this heat flux can exceed 1000 W/cm2). State-of-the-art air cooling strategies which utilize the sensible heat are insufficient at these large heat fluxes. As a result, novel thermal management solutions such as via thin-film evaporation that utilize the latent heat of vaporization of a fluid are needed. The high latent heat of vaporization associated with typical liquid-vapor phase change phenomena allows significant heat transfer with small temperature rise. In this work, we demonstrate a promising thermal management approach where square arrays of cylindrical micropillar arrays are used for thin-film evaporation. The microstructures control the liquid film thickness and the associated thermal resistance in addition to maintaining a continuous liquid supply via the capillary pumping mechanism. When the capillary-induced liquid supply mechanism cannot deliver sufficient liquid for phase change heat transfer, the critical heat flux is reached and dryout occurs. This capillary limitation on thin-film evaporation was experimentally investigated by fabricating well-defined silicon micropillar arrays using standard contact photolithography and deep reactive ion etching. A thin film resistive heater and thermal sensors were integrated on the back side of the test sample using e-beam evaporation and acetone lift-off. The experiments were carried out in a controlled environmental chamber maintained at the water saturation pressure of ≈3.5 kPa and ≈25 °C. We demonstrated significantly higher heat dissipation capability in excess of 100 W/cm2. These preliminary results suggest the potential of thin-film evaporation from microstructured surfaces for advanced thermal management applications.


Author(s):  
Jessica Sheehan ◽  
Avram Bar-Cohen

Heat transfer to an evaporating refrigerant and/or dielectric liquid in a microgap channel can provide very high heat transfer coefficients and volumetric cooling rates. Recent studies at Maryland have established the dominance of the annular flow regime in such microgap channels and related the observed high-quality peak of an M-shaped heat transfer coefficient curve to the onset of local dryout. The present study utilizes infrared thermography to locate such nascent dryout regions and operating conditions. Data obtained with a 210 micron microgap channel, operated with a mass flux of 195.2 kg/m2-s and heat fluxes of 10.3 to 26 W/cm2 are presented and discussed.


1974 ◽  
Vol 96 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. E. Megerlin ◽  
R. W. Murphy ◽  
A. E. Bergles

This paper summarizes the results of a study to determine the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of two types of tube inserts developed specifically for augmenting heat transfer and accommodating high heat fluxes. The best performing mesh-insert tubes exhibited heat transfer coefficients nine times the coefficients with empty tubes while brush-insert tubes had coefficients averaging five times the empty tube values, both comparisons being made at equal mass velocity. Both inserts produced very large pressure drops. Subcooled boiling curves and burnout points are presented; burnout heat fluxes are two to three times the empty tube values at equal mass velocity. For single-phase conditions and for burnout, the mesh and brush tubes have favorable performance characteristics, based on pumping power, which suggest use of these inserts in certain special cooling systems.


2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle L. Wilke ◽  
Banafsheh Barabadi ◽  
TieJun Zhang ◽  
Evelyn N. Wang

With the ever increasing cooling demands of advanced electronics, thin film evaporation has emerged as one of the most promising thermal management solutions. High heat transfer rates can be achieved in thin films of liquids due to a small conduction resistance through the film to the evaporating interface. In thin film evaporation, maintaining a stable liquid film to attain high evaporation rates is challenging. We investigated nanoporous anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) membranes to supply liquid to the evaporating surface via capillarity. In this work, we achieved enhanced experimental control via the creation of a hydrophobic section within the nanopore. By creating a non-wetting section, the liquid is confined within the membrane to a region of well-controlled geometry. This non-wetting section also prevents flooding, where the formation of a thick liquid film degrades device performance. When heat flux is applied to the membrane surface, the liquid wicks into the membrane from the bottom and becomes pinned at the onset of the hydrophobic layer. As a result, the wetting in the membrane is controlled, flooding is prevented, and a stable evaporating surface in achieved. With this approach, thin film evaporation from nanoporous media can now be studied for varying parameters such as pore size, porosity, and location of the meniscus within the pore.


Author(s):  
Adam G. Pautsch ◽  
Timothy A. Shedd

As electronic circuit design and packaging technology progresses, the density and power levels of electronic components is increasing at a nearly exponential rate. The higher heat loads dissipated by these devices are nearing the limits of traditional cooling techniques. One method capable of removing heat fluxes as high as 100 W/cm2 is spray cooling. This process involves the impingement of liquid droplets onto a heated surface, forming a thin two-phase film. In order to create reliable models of the heat transfer during spray cooling, the behavior of the film must be understood. This paper presents an investigation into the behavior of the thin film found in spray cooling. A study was performed to relate experimental measurements of the heat transfer coefficients to experimental measurements of film thickness as they vary spatially over a die surface. Both a single nozzle and a multi-nozzle array were investigated. Measured heat transfer coefficients ranged from 0.2 to 1.2 W/m2K and film thicknesses ranged from 90 to 300 μm.


2009 ◽  
Vol 132 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Aaron Chan ◽  
Christopher R. Yap ◽  
Kim Choon Ng

This research paper presents a study of boiling heat transfer from longitudinal rectangular-finned surfaces immersed in saturated water at low vapor pressures. Finned surfaces with assorted fin spacing, fin thicknesses, and fin heights on a copper based surface have been investigated. All the finned surfaces were found to increase both boiling heat transfer coefficients and critical heat fluxes. An optimal fin thickness was found for a configuration, and heat transfer coefficients have been obtained at the pressures. Factors affecting the boiling characteristics have been identified and the optimal enhancement requires a balance of the active nucleation sites, bubble flow resistance, natural convection, thin film evaporation, liquid superheating, heat transfer area, bubble coalescence, and liquid reflux resistance. High speed visualization of vapor plug and vapor film generation on the boiling surfaces has revealed significant insights into the boiling mechanisms at low saturation pressures.


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