Demonstration of high-performance silicon microchannel heat exchangers for laser diode array cooling

Abstract

A heat exchanger package has been demonstrated for semiconductor laser arrays using silicon microstructures with water as the coolant. A thermal impedance of 0.04 °C cm2/W has been achieved for a single linear bar. This design makes use of efficient, edge-emitting laser diode arrays in a rack and stack architecture combined with a high-performance silicon microchannel structure to allow cw operation. The architecture can be scaled to large areas and we project a thermal impedance of 0.09 °C cm2/W for close-packed two-dimensional arrays on this device.

Next Generation Microchannel Heat Exchangers

“…Microchannel heat transfer, however, has become increasingly popular and interesting to researchers due to high heat transfer coefficients, with potential for record-high heat transfer coefficient and low to moderate pressure drops when compared to conventional air and liquid cooled systems (Philips 1988;Gillot et al 2000;Hsu et al 1995;Hahn et al 1997;Martin et al 1995;Viday et al 1993). For example, microchannel heat sinks have been demonstrated for high-power laser diode array cooling and have achieved a heat flux removal rate of 500 W/cm 2 (Missaggia et al 1989;Mundinger et al 1988;Beach et al 1992). Figure 1.1 shows the proposed design of a two-phase microchannel heat sink fabricated on the backside of a flip chipbonded IC chip (Zang et al 2003).…”

<title>Microchannel heat sink with alternating directions of water flow in adjacent channels (Invited Paper)</title>

“…(4) Here Rfi is the thermal resistance between the two channels. If the assumptions are made that a linear regime of heat flow applies and that h is constant with z, it can be shown that the sum of (i) and (2) yields ¶cp d(Ti+T2) 1 dz = (2/RfiJ(T2-Ti).…”

Improved heat sinking for laser-diode arrays using microchannels in CVD diamond

“…Sakamoto et al [5] increased the total CW output power from 76-120 W by embedding a diamond submount between a AlGaAs/GaAs laser-diode array and a copper heat spreader. 2) Another approach to reducing the thermal resistance is to use convection in microchannels [6], which in the past have been etched into silicon. Missaggia et al [7] mounted GaInAsP/InP buried heterostructure laserdiode arrays on a silicon microchannel heat sink using a solder joint, as depicted in Fig.…”