UH collaborates to solve device overheating issues

Recent work at UH has made strides in the management of heat in modern technology — a problem that has persisted over the past two decades.

As electronic devices and equipment grow smaller, they leave less amount of space for heat to dissipate, creating the issue of overheating, said Dong Liu, assistant professor of mechanical engineering.

Liu teamed up with associate professor Ronggui Yang of the University of Colorado at Boulder and G.P. “Bud” Peterson, president of the Georgia Institute of Technology, to research this problem. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency helped fund the project. The money was awarded to Yang specifically as he was the principal investigator.

“This work is the fruit of a collaborative research. (Our work) is the very first effort in this literature,” Liu said.

“Electronics cooling applications require cooling devices of small form factor and low power consumptions but with ultra-high heat dissipation capability,” Liu said.

“Previously, nanowires have been used as a coating on plain surfaces to enhance boiling heat transfer. Our nanowires are monolithically integrated in the microchannels; they are synthesized within the 3D microchannels.”

Their research utilizes a technique called flow boiling.

“Flow boiling is a heat transfer process where the coolant is pumped through the flow channels and undergoes liquid-vapor phase change,” Liu said.

“When combined with microchannels, these are very attractive features for compact cooling systems. However, flow boiling may become very unstable in microchannels.”

With the new technology, nanowires significantly enhance the flow boiling heat transfer and suppress common factors such as flow blockage and instability, Liu said. It does this by providing enough sites for nucleation — the locations where phase change occurs — and facilitating capillary rewetting of the boiling surface.

The research was published in Nano Letters, a monthly peer-reviewed journal published by the American Chemical Society.

Lui said the team intends to carry on with this work and wishes to continue designing advanced cooling systems for 3D electronics.

Yang and Peterson were not available for comment.

Edit at 11:17 a.m. Wednesday: The information regarding the funding support in yesterday’s Nanowire story was inaccurate.  The project was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency through an award to the University of Colorado — Professor Yang was the Principal Investigator.  UH did not receive  a subcontract from the University of Colorado at Boulder, Liu said in an email. The Daily Cougar was responsible for the error and apologizes.

Edit at 11:55 a.m. Wednesday: Some technical errors were addressed in the story.

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