MEMS Based Capillary Pumped Loops for Integral Thermal Management

In continuation of the work performed on the micro-capillary pumped loop (CPL), a Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) based CPL was designed built and tested to remove heat over a 1 cm2 area. This CPL was designed using traditional heat pipe theory and uses a three wafer pure silicon design with an external reservoir and a working fluid of water. After integration with an insulted gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) to work as a heat source the 1cm2 (mini-CPL) was found to provide 15 degrees of consistent cooling with a 3W power input. To improve this design a hybrid mini-CPL utilizing ceramic flow lines and silicon heat exchangers was designed and constructed. To better understand the micro-fluidic principles utilized it1 the micro and mini CPLs, experiments were conducted to understand the pressure drops and effective fluid properties of various CPL filling fluids while flowing through micro-channels.