Compact modeling approach for microchannel cooling and its validation

This paper presents a new compact modeling technique to describe the convective heat transfer realized by laminar flow of coolant in integrated microchannels used for thermal management of 3D ICs—with the aim of being able to implement this model for fast thermal simulators used in logi-thermal simulation frameworks. This model works only on laminar flow in straight channels. The compact model represents the convective heat transfer with a special resistor network representing one directional heat transfer realized by the flow of the coolant. The implementation of this model in a thermal field solver based on the successive node reduction (SUNRED) algorithm is also presented. The validation of the model is based on two examples. First, we compare the result obtained with the new model with the results provided by a commercially available CFD software for a simplified test case. The other pivot of the validation is an actual measurement of the thermal resistances of microfluidic cooling system under different flow-rates of coolant. The errors were calculated as the difference of the results of the direct implementation of the alternating resistors model, the modified SUNRED model and the result of a detailed CFD simulation for the test case. The error of the simulation of the cooling device is based on the difference of the directly measured and simulated thermal resistances. The comparison showed that the error of our new compact model was close to 5%.