Hot spot targeting with a liquid impinging jet array waterblock

Liquid cooling of electronic devices is widely accepted as the next logical step for electronics thermal management as board level air cooling becomes insufficient to meet the needs of next generation components and devices. One promising technology is liquid jet array impingement as it can achieve exceptionally high area averaged heat transfer coefficients. In this work the use of arrays of liquid impinging jets in a waterblock configuration is posed as one possible technology for on-chip hot spot targeting. A simple test case is posed and an optimization strategy is employed to distribute jets in the hot spot and outer regions differently in order to reduce the maximum temperature difference and/or the root mean squared deviation of the temperature on the chip. It is concluded that with a priori knowledge of the heat flux distribution on-chip, this method of hot spot targeting offers an uncomplicated and potentially cost effective means of bulk cooling and temperature homogenization. ©EDA Publishing/THERMINIC 2009.