Liquid cooling module incorporating a metal foam and fin hybrid structure for high power insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs)

Abstract

We propose a liquid cooling system incorporating a porous medium combined to the multiscale flow manifold. Specifically, this work compares two types of porous media by varying the porosity: the first type only includes a metal foam layer, and the second incorporates an additional circular pin-fin array within the metal foam. The thermohydraulic performances of each type such as the average junction temperature, temperature deviation, flow were investigated using both numerical and experimental approaches. Due to the influence of the additional thermal conductivity matrix by fin structure integration, the second configuration (metal-foam and pin-fin hybrid type) provides a higher thermal performance compared to the first one. The suggested cooling solution with the second configuration could provide a very low thermal resistance (similar to 0.185 K/W) with the pressure drop range between 5 and 15 kPa, which surpasses the performances of the previous-reported direct liquid cooling solutions such as the jet impingement, turbulator, and microchannel. This work will help develop high performance and compact cooling solutions for high power semiconductor applications such as an insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) or a microprocessor.