Eficient cost-effective cooling solution for high performance chips
https://phys.org/news/2018-05-eficient-cost-effective-cooling-solution-high.html
The ideal chip cooler is an impingement-based cooler with distributed coolant outlets. It puts the cooling liquid in direct contact with the chip and sprays the liquid perpendicular to the chip surface. This ensures that all the liquid on the chip surface has the same temperature and reduces the contact time between coolant and chip. However, current impingement coolers have the drawback that they are silicon-based and thus expensive, or that their nozzle diameters and use processes are not compatible with the chip packaging process flow.
Imec has developed a new impingement chip cooler that uses polymers instead of silicon, to achieve a cost-effective fabrication. Moreover, imec's solution features nozzles of only 300µm, made by high-resolution stereolithography 3D printing. The use of 3D printing allows e customization of the nozzle pattern design to match the heat map and the fabrication of complex internal structures. Moreover, 3D printing allows to efficiently print the whole structure in one part, reducing production cost and time.