Experimental investigation of microchannel coolers for the high heat flux thermal management of GaN-on-SiC semiconductor devices

Design and Modeling of Membrane-Based Evaporative Cooling Devices for Thermal Management of High Heat Fluxes

“…One of the most pressing challenges in current and next-generation electronics is heat removal of wide band gap semiconductors based on gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC), for high-power radiofrequency (RF) applications [4]. For example, monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) based on GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technology are devices of particular importance for microwave applications.…”

“…Even on the backside of the die, the heat flux can still be > 1 kW/cm 2 [6]. Such high fluxes are likely to induce high temperatures in the gate area, which can reduce the lifetime and the reliability of the GaN HEMT devices [4]. To lower the near junction temperature and handle the high heat loads, new cooling methods are needed.…”

“…We then determined the thermal and hydraulic performance of the cooling device as a function of kW/cm 2 -K can be achieved with 1.9 L/min water flowing through copper microchannels [4]. With such microchannel coolers rejecting heat to a reservoir maintained at 25 °C, we simulated the heat conduction in the device to determine temperature and the heat flux distribution in the GaN HEMT (Figure 1(a) and (b)) using the finite element method in COMSOL Multiphysics [25], where the total number of elements was 4383224 and the relative tolerance for convergence was set as 10 -6 .…”

A Numerical Study on Comparing the Active and Passive Cooling of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs

“…Due to the high-power densities induced in these devices locally near the drain side edge of the gate, it is clear that moving thermal management solutions closer to the heat generation region is critical in order to reduce the overall junction temperature of the device. A number of solutions have been proposed to reduce the junction temperatures in AlGaN/GaN HEMTs [1]- [4]. These solutions include the use of high thermal conductivity substrates such as diamond [5] and microchannel cooling to effectively remove thermal energy from the device [4].…”

“…A number of solutions have been proposed to reduce the junction temperatures in AlGaN/GaN HEMTs [1]- [4]. These solutions include the use of high thermal conductivity substrates such as diamond [5] and microchannel cooling to effectively remove thermal energy from the device [4]. The majority of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs are grown on SiC substrates due to its high thermal conductivity (∼400 W/mK), which is ∼2.5 times that of GaN.…”