Heat Transfer Engineering, Vol.35, No.10, 913-923, 2014
Design and Testing of a Graphite Foam-Based Supercooler for High-Heat-Flux Cooling in Optoelectronic Packages
The feasibility of using graphite foam as a heat sink and heat spreader in optoelectronic packages is assessed. A supercooler is designed, fabricated, and tested to verify its cooling capability under high heat flux conditions in a typical optoelectronic package. The supercooler uses graphite foam as a primary heat transfer material. Water is soaked into the graphite foam, and under evacuated pressure, boiling is initiated under the heating region to provide enhanced cooling. Experiments were conducted for a heat flux of up to 400W/cm(2) deposited over a heating area of 0.5mm x 5mm. Two-dimensional transient temperature distributions were recorded using a high-speed infrared camera. Data were obtained for steady heating, and for periodic heating with frequency up to 8Hz. Results show that the supercooler is very efficient in dissipating heat away from the heating region. The average cooling rate during the cooling period exceeds 170K/s.