Dielectric Nanofluid Jet-Impingement Cooling of Laptop CPU Package

Abstract Semiconductors form the cornerstone of innovation, however, to maintain optimal performance and longevity of these devices, efficient thermal management is essential. Phase-I of this study aims to investigate the heat transfer potential of three different Jet Impingement (JI) flow topologies (uniflow, loopflow, and crossflow) as potential thermal solutions for use in high-powered personal laptops. The three JI flow topologies were tested using distilled water as a heat transfer fluid (HTF) at flowrates of 3 m/s, 6 m/s and 9 m/s. A computational simulation software, Ansys Fluent 2023 R1, was used to compare the performance of all three designs under various operating conditions. Of the three designs tested, uniflow showed the best cooling performance, outperforming the other two designs by an average of 20% across multiple flowrates, while keeping the chip temperature well below the threshold. In Phase-II, the thermal performance of the uniflow design was further evaluated using several different HTFs with and without nanoparticles at a flowrate of 3 m/s. The results indicate that utilizing a uniflow design with pure silicone liquid with 2% Al2O3 yielded the lowest chip temperature of 37.56 °C among all the other HTFs tested. Therefore, the said configuration can be used as a viable direct-contact thermal solution for high-power processors within personal laptops.