Design, Analysis, Modeling and Testing of a Micro-scale Refrigeration System

<p>Chip scale refrigeration system is critical for the development of electronics with the rapid increase of power consumption and substantial reduction of device size, resulting in an emergent demand on novel cooling technologies with a high efficiency for the thermal management. In this thesis, active refrigeration devices based on Stirling cycle and an electrocaloric material, are designed and investigated to achieve a high cooling performance. Firstly, a new Stirling micro-refrigeration system composed of arrays of silicon MEMS cooling elements is designed and evaluated. The cooling elements are fabricated in a stacked array on a silicon wafer. A regenerator is placed between the compression (hot side) and expansion (cold side) diaphragms, which are driven electrostatically. Under operating conditions, the hot and cold diaphragms oscillate sinusoidally and out of phase such that heat is extracted to the expansion space and released from the compression space. A first-order of thermodynamic analysis is performed to study the effect of geometric parameters. Losses due to regenerator non-idealities and chamber heat transfer limitation are estimated. A multiphysics computational approach for analyzing the system performance that considers compressible flow and heat transfer with a large deformable mesh is demonstrated. The optimal regenerator porosity for the best system COP (coefficient of performance) is identified. To overcome the computational complexity brought about by the fine pillar structure in the regenerator, a porous medium model is used to allow for modeling of a full element. The analysis indicates the work recovery of the system and the diaphragm actuation are main challenges for this cooler design.The pressure drop and friction factor of gas flow across circular silicon micro pillar arrays fabricated by deep reactive ion etch (DRIE) process are investigated. A new correlation that considers the coupled effect of pillar spacing and aspect ratio, is proposed to predict the friction factor in a Reynolds v number range of 1-100. Silicon pillars with large artificial roughness amplitudes is also fabricated, and the effect of the roughness is studied in the laminar flow region. The significant reduction of pressure drop and friction factor indicates that a large artificial roughness could be built for pillar arrays in the regenerator to enhance the micro-cooler efficiency. The second option is to develop a fluid-based refrigeration system using an electrocaloric material poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene-chlorofluoroethylene) [P(VDF-TrFE-CFE)] terpolymer. Each cooling element includes two diaphragm actuators fabricated in the plane of a silicon wafer, which drive a heat transfer fluid back and forth across terpolymer layers that are placed between them. Finite element simulations with an assumption of sinusoidal diaphrahm motions are conducted to explore the system performance detailedly, including the effects of the applied electric field, geometric dimensions, operating frequency and externally-applied temperature span. Multiphysics modeling coupled with solid-fluid interaction, heat transfer, electrostatics, porous medium and moving mesh technique is successfully performed to verify the thermal modeling feasibility. The electrocaloric effect in thin films of P(VDF-TrFE-CFE) terpolymer is directly measured by infrared imaging at ambient conditions. At an electric field of 90 V/μm, an adiabatic temperature change of 5.2 °C is obtained and the material performance is stable over a long testing period. These results suggest that application of this terpolymer is promising for micro-scale refrigeration.</p

hermal-Aware Microchannel Cooling of Multicore Processors: A Three-Stage Design Approach

<p>This study goes beyond the common microchannel cooling system composed of uniform parallel straight microchannels and proposed a three-stage design approach for spatially thermal-aware microchannel cooling of 2D multicore processors. By applying effective strategies and arranging key design parameters, stronger cooling is provided under the high power core area, and less cooling is provided under the low power cache area to effectively save the precious pumping power, lower the hot spot temperature and lower temperature gradients on chip. Two microchannel cooling systems are specifically designed for a 2 core 150 W Intel Tulsa processor and an 8 core 260 W (doubled power) Intel Nehalem processor with single phase HFE7100 as coolant. For the Tulsa processor, a strategy named strip-and-zone is used. The final design leads to 30 kPa pressure drop and 0.094 W pumping power while maintains the hot spot temperature to be 75 °C. For the Nehalem processor, a split flow microchannel system and a widen-inflow strategy are applied. A design is achieved to cost 15 kPa pressure drop and 0.0845 W pumping power while maintains the hot spot temperature to be 82.9°C. The design approach in this study provides the basic guide for the industrial applications of effective multicore processor cooling using microchannels.</p

Multiphysics modeling of a micro-scale Stirling refrigeration system

<p>A new micro-scale refrigeration system composed of arrays of silicon MEMS cooling elements that operate on the Stirling cycle has been designed. In this paper, we describe a multiphysics computational approach for analyzing the system performance that considers compressible flow and heat transfer with a large deformable mesh. The regenerator pressure drop and effectiveness are first explored to determine the optimal porosity. A value near 0.9 is found to maximize the coefficient of performance. To overcome the computational complexity brought about by the fine pillar structure in the regenerator, a porous medium model is used to allow for modeling of a full element. Parametric studies demonstrate the effect of the operating frequency on the cooling capacity and the coefficient of performance.</p

Electrocaloric characterization of a poly(vinylidene fluoridetrifluoroethylene-chlorofluoroethylene) terpolymer by infrared imaging

<p>The electrocaloric effect in thin films of a poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene chlorofluoroethylene) terpolymer (62.6/29.4/8 mol. %, 11–12 μm thick) is directly measured by infrared imaging at ambient conditions. The adiabatic temperature change is estimated to be 5.2 K for an applied electric field of 90 V/μm. The temperature change is independent of the operating frequency in the range of 0.03–0.3 Hz and is stable over a testing period of 30 min. Application of this terpolymer is promising for micro-scale refrigeration</p

Design and modeling of a fluid-based micro-scale electrocaloric refrigeration system

<p>A refrigeration system composed of silicon MEMS cooling elements is designed based on the electrocaloric (EC) effect in a P(VDF–TrFE–CFE) terpolymer, poly(vinylidene fluoride–trifluoroethylene–chlorofluoroethylene) 59.2/33.6/7.2 mol%. Each cooling element includes two diaphragm actuators fabricated in the plane of a silicon wafer, which drive a heat transfer fluid back and forth across terpolymer layers that are placed between them. In the EC effect, reversible temperature and entropy changes related to polarization changes appear in a material under the application and removal of an electric field. Finite element simulations are performed to explore the system performance. The effect of the applied electric field is studied, and the time lag between the electric field and the diaphragm motion is found to significantly affect the cooling power. A parametric study of the operating frequency, externally-applied temperature span, and the electric field amplitude are conducted. The results indicate that when the system is operated at a temperature span of 15 K, a cooling power density of 3 W/cm²and a percent of Carnot <em>COP</em> of 31% are achieved for one element.</p