Electronics Spot Cooling With Liquid Nitrogen

Abstract

This paper describes an ongoing research to evaluate and characterize electrohydro-dynamic (EHD) meso- and micro-pumps for spot cooling of sensors. In the proposed concept, the localized cooling is achieved by means of a flow of liquid nitrogen that is driven by an ion-drag pump towards the heat source, where heat is directly removed. First, a numerical heat transfer model will illustrate the advantages of the proposed concept of spot cooling with liquid nitrogen against a conventional conduction cooling. Next, we will present experimental results for pumping of liquid nitrogen via (EHD) a pump at the meso-scale, as well as experiments with EHD micro-pumps for pumping of HFE-7100 at room temperature. The objective of this research is to establish the optimum operational and design conditions for micro-pumping of liquid nitrogen for spot cooling applications.