Spreaders for immersion nucleate boiling cooling of a computer chip with a central hot spot

This paper numerically investigates the performance of composite spreaders comprised of Cu substrates and Cu micro-porous surfaces of different thicknesses for immersion cooling of 10 × 10 mm underlying computer chip with a 2 × 2 mm central hot spot. The local heat flux at the hot spot is three times the chip’s surface average outside the hot spot. The thickness of the Cu substrate changes from 1.6 to 3.2 mm and that of the Cu micro-porous surface changes from 80 to 197 μm. The spreaders are cooled by saturation nucleate boiling of PF-5060 dielectric liquid. The local values of the nucleate boiling heat transfer coefficients on the various Cu micro-porous surfaces are based on pool boiling experimental measurements. Results demonstrated the effectiveness of immersion cooling nucleate boiling for mitigating the effect of the hot spot. The spreaders decrease the maximum surface temperature and the temperature gradient on the chip surface and increase the dissipated thermal power by the chip and removed from the spreader surface. Increasing the thickness of the Cu substrate and/or decreasing the thickness of the Cu micro-porous surface increases the total thermal power removed, the chip surface temperature and the spreader’s footprint area.

► The paper introduces a spreader concept for cooling high power chip with a hot spot.
► Spreader is comprised of a Cu substrate and copper micro-porous surface.
► Spreaders surface is cooled by nucleate boiling of PF-5060 dielectric liquid.
► Analysis demonstrated spreader effectiveness for mitigating hot spot effect.