Thermoregulated Microvalve for Self-Adaptive Microfluidic Cooling

This work aims at developing a passive and thermoregulated microvalve in order to manage a local and adaptive cooling for microelectronics. Such microvalve can serve as flow regulators in an array of liquid cooling cells below a chip. Two Ag valves of 2000 and 1733 μm long each are designed, microfabricated and experimentally tested to validate their proper use in this cooling context. The 1733 μm valve opening has shifted from 2 to 24.7 μm, when exposed to a hot plate at room temperature and at 80 °C respectively, demonstrating a significant fluidic crosssection shift. The valve also stayed in its elastic deformation range up to 160 °C. Finally, the 1733 μm microvalve demonstrated that it was possible to regulate water flow rate from <;0.5 to 3.0 ml/min at a constant pressure drop of 5 kPa. This makes the microvalve a suitable organ for thermoregulating the cooling cells matrices.