Experimental characterization and model validation of liquid jet impingement cooling using a high spatial resolution and programmable thermal test chip

Highlights: • A high spatial resolution and programmable thermal test chip is introduced. • A high level detail of local heater structures is necessary for high heat removal rates of multi-jet cooling during CFD modeling analysis. • Thermal performance benchmarking between the single jet cooling and multi-jet cooling for electronic applications. • Correlations development for single jet cooling and multi-jet cooling with locally distributed outlets configurations. -- Abstract: High efficiency direct liquid jet impingement cooling with locally distributed outlets is very promising in high power electronic devices. In order to elucidate the flow-thermal interaction for micro-scale jet impingement cooling, sensitive temperature measurements with high spatial and temporal resolution are required. In this work, a programmable thermal test chip with 832 heater cells with 75% heater uniformity and 32 × 32 array of temperature sensors is introduced. The detailed measured temperature maps for different power dissipation patterns allow the in-depth study of the thermal performance of liquid jet impingement coolers and the detailed experimental validation of complex CFD models. The modeling and measurement study is applied to two jet impingement cooling implementations: (1) a single jet cooler with a 2 mm diameter nozzle, and (2) a multi-jet cooler with a 4 × 4 array of 500 µm inlet nozzles and distributed outlet nozzles. For both cooler configurations, the temperature measurements and CFD modeling results are investigated and compared for uniform and hot spot power dissipation patterns.