Numerical study of a liquid metal mini-channel cooler for power semiconductor devices

The need to adopt new cooling techniques arouse because of the continuous increase in power dissipation of electronic parts and systems. Due to the low thermal conductivity of classical liquids (water, alcohols, dielectric fluids...), in many cases, the standard liquid cooling techniques cannot achieve the required cooling performances. This paper deals with dimensioning a liquid metal mini-channel cooler for power semi conductor devices (IGBT, MOSFET or diodes). A lot of investigations deal with of the subject of dimensioning water mini-channel cooler. Contrary, there's no paper deal with the subject of dimensioning a liquid metal mini-channel cooler. In this paper, a numerical investigation of liquid metal channel is presented in order to determinate a methodology to design a liquid metal mini-channel cooler. Three important functions will be discussed: the advantage of using liquid metal for cooling power electronics devices, the validity of classical method to design water mini-channel cooler in the case of liquid metal. In the last part a new method is proposed to design liquid metal mini-channel cooler.