A review of convective heat transfer with nanofluids for electronics packaging

Nanofluids are conventional heat transfer liquids, such as water or glycol mixtures, which contain a small volume fraction of suspended nanoparticles in a colloidal solution. Numerous experiments on the static thermal conductivity of these fluids have revealed a greater-than-expected effective thermal conductivity, and thus there is great interest in utilizing nanofluids for heat transfer applications. For electronic packaging, their thermal performance under convective heat transfer conditions is of greatest interest. Therefore, we report here a critical review of the limited existing data on convective heat transfer with nanofluids. The results indicate higher Nusselt numbers than those predicted from analytical expressions at low Reynolds numbers, or by the Dittus-Boelter correlation at higher Reynolds numbers. Based on these findings, the applicability of convective heat sinks containing nanofluids are promising for electronics packaging applications.