Investigation of the Flow and Thermal Performance of Liquid Metal Mini-channel Heat Sink

In this paper, the flow and thermal performance of a liquid metal mini-channel heat sink is investigated, both by numerical simulation and theoretical analysis. A 3D conjugate flow and thermal resistance model is developed for the heat sink; where, the frictional drag and local pressure loss are considered in the flow resistance model; spreading resistance, conduction resistance, convection resistance and capacity resistance are involved in the thermal resistance model. The influences of the inlet/outlet size and flow configuration on the performance of the heat sink under different flow rate are evaluated. The characteristics and differences of liquid metal cooling and water cooling are intuitively and quantitatively compared. The results obtained by the developed 3D approximate theoretical model shows good agreement with the numerical results. The thermal resistance of the heat sink optimized by the model can be as low as 0.14℃/W under the flow rate of 1 L/min, while the pressure drop is only 1 kPa, which shows good potential for cooling of high power chips.