Thermostatic Fins for Spatially and Temporally Adaptive Microfluidic Cooling

A novel concept of self-adaptive fins which are able to adapt their shape to the instantaneous thermal requirements is presented in this work. Thermal buckling of doubly clamped silver beams is implemented as a passive actuation mechanism to act as a self-adaptive vortex generator inside the microchannel, to both disturb the boundary layer and enhance the thermal resistance coefficient. For a given non-uniform and temporal heat load distribution and a constant flow rate, settled in order to ensure a maximum junction temperature of 85°C, this paper studies the chip temperature and the reduction of pressure drop and pumping power achieved by the self-adaptive fins comparing it to a system with fixed fins inside, acting as traditional longitudinal vortex generators. A reduction of 8% in average pumping power is achieved comparing both systems.