Grant: Idea to Innovation

To reduce the cooling power consumption and improve the reliability of microelectronics and electrical power systems, intelligent thermal management becomes necessary, especially considering that heat loads vary over time and across different components. To address this need, we have created a new approach for cooling that can minimise the coolant consumption while maintaining the temperature uniform, even under time-dependant and non-uniform heat load scenarios. Indeed, the internal geometry of a liquid-cooled heat sink is able to tailor the distribution of the heat extraction capacity to the local needs. It does so over large surfaces without sensors or external power, using the local heat to deform thermostatic fins and valves to locally adapt the thermal resistance and coolant flow rate, respectively. The goal is to bring this technology from TRL 4 to 6 to attract partner interest and pursue its development, for future licensing and commercialisation by the partner. The objectives of this project are to define the most promising device configurations for specific applications (data center cooling and power electronics cooling), demonstrate a 50% reduction in power consumption and 10°C reduction in temperature non-uniformity, and asses the reliability and operability limits.