Liquid metal based mini/micro channel cooling device

Effective heat dissipation is of great importance in many engineering fields. In this paper, we investigated a newly emerging method to significantly improve the cooling capability of micro channel devices, through implementing liquid metal with low melting point as the powerful coolant. A series of experiments with different working fluids and volume flow were performed, and the different cooling effects between liquid metal and water were compared. In order to better evaluate the cooling capability of liquid metal based micro channel cooling device, the hydrodynamic and heat transfer theory involved was discussed. The results indicated that, when the system operated in a relatively high velocity, micro channel cooling devices with liquid metal as coolant could produce higher convective heat transfer coefficient compared to those with traditional cooling fluids. And under the same pump power, not only the thermal resistance of liquid metal based micro channel could be much smaller, but also the coolant volume flow could be decreased. What is more, the liquid metal can be driven by a highly efficient electromagnetic pump without any noise. Therefore, more compact and energy-saving micro channel cooling devices with better cooling capability may come into reality. This new method is rather practical, and is expected to be important for realizing an extremely high heat dissipation rate.