IMEC Spray Cooling

    The development of high-performance electronic system puts forward higher and higher requirements for heat dissipation capacity. The traditional thermal solution is to attach the heat exchanger to the heat sink, and then attach the heat sink to the back of the chip. These interconnects have thermal interface interconnect materials (TIMS), which produce fixed thermal resistance and cannot be overcome by introducing more effective cooling solutions. Direct cooling on the back of the chip will be more effective, but the existing cooling microchannel solutions will produce a temperature gradient on the chip surface.

     The ideal chip cooling solution is a spray cooler with distributed coolant outlet. It directly applies cooling liquid in the interconnection with the chip, and then sprays it vertically to the chip surface, which can ensure that all liquids on the chip surface have the same temperature and reduce the contact time between the coolant and the chip. However, the existing spray cooler has disadvantages, either because it is expensive based on silicon, or its nozzle diameter and application process are incompatible with the chip packaging process.

     IMEC has developed a new spray chip cooler. Firstly, high polymer is used to replace silicon to reduce manufacturing cost; Secondly, using high-precision 3D printing manufacturing technology, not only the nozzle is only 300 microns, but also the heat map and complex internal structure can be matched through the customization of nozzle graphic design, and the manufacturing cost and time can be reduced.

   IMEC's spray cooler achieves high cooling efficiency. At the coolant flow rate of 1 L / min, the increase of chip temperature per 100W / cm2 area shall not exceed 15 ℃. Another advantage is that the pressure applied by a single droplet is as low as 0.3bar through a smart internal design. These performance indicators exceed the standard values of traditional cooling solutions. In the traditional solution, only the thermal interface material can cause the temperature rise of 20-50 ℃. In addition to the advantages of efficient and low-cost manufacturing, the size of IMEC solution is much smaller than that of existing solutions, which better matches the size of chip package and supports the reduction of chip package and more efficient cooling.