Modelling of the flow-rate dependent partial thermal resistance of integrated microscale cooling structures

As microscale cooling structures are integral parts of modern chip level cooling concepts, the understanding the behaviour of different assemblies is desirable. This way novel co-design concepts can be created where the conventional IC design steps are extended with thermal design capabilities resulting in a SiP/SoP design flow. The first step in this process is to create a general formula which describes the heat transfer mechanism and can be implemented in IC CAD environments as a compact model. This paper presents an analytical study of an integrated microscale channel based cooling structure with the above motivation in mind. A closed analytical formula is given to calculate the partial thermal resistance corresponding to the heat transfer represented by the coolant which can be used in electro-thermal co-simulation. The analyses based on numerical CFD simulations and thermal transient characterizations of a realized structure are also discussed and the results are compared against the analytical ones.