This paper presents an experimental study on the convective boiling heat transfer and the critical heat flux (CHF) of ethanol-water mixtures in a diverging microchannel with artificial cavities. The results show that the boiling heat transfer and the CHF are significantly influenced by the molar fraction (x(m)) as well as the mass flux. For the single-phase convection region except for the region near the onset of nucleate boiling with temperature overshoot, the single-phase heat transfer coefficient is independent of the wall superheat and increases with a decrease in the molar fraction. After boiling incipience, the two-phase heat transfer coefficient is much higher than that of single-phase convection. The two-phase heat transfer coefficient shows a maximum in the region of bubbly-elongated slug flow and deceases with a further increase in the wall superheat until approaching a condition of CHF, indicating that the heat transfer is mainly dominated by convective boiling. A flow-pattern-based empirical correlation for the two-phase heat transfer coefficient of the flow boiling of ethanol-water mixtures is developed. The overall mean absolute error of the proposed correlation is 15.5%, and more than 82.5% of the experimental data were predicted within a +/- 25% error band. The CHF increases from x(m) = 0-0.1, and then decreases rapidly from x(m) = 0.1-1 at a given mass flux of 175 kg/m(2) s. The maximum CHF is reached at x(m) = 0.1 due to the Marangoni effect, indicating that small additions of ethanol into water could significantly increase the CHF. On the other hand, the CHF increases with increasing the mass flux at a given molar fraction of 0.1. Moreover, the experimental CHF results are compared with existing CHF correlations of flow boiling of the mixtures in a microchannel. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.