Development and characterization of microcoolers using carbon nanotubes

The continuously increasing integration and packaging density of microelectronic systems requires highperformance cooling technologies, among which the microchannel cooler is considered as a good approach. This work aims to develop a microchannel cooler with vertically aligned carbon nanotubes as the fins. Carbon nanotubes have unusually high thermal conductivity along with the possibility of small-scale formatting and wafer-level integration with chips, thus they provide a promising solution to implement microchannel coolers. By using photolithography, chemical vapor deposition, and adhesive bonding techniques, microcoolers containing carbon nanotube fins of different sizes and spacings are fabricated and then tested. They are also compared to a cooler with common silicon fins, as well as one with no fins. The experimental results reveal good heat removal capability of microcoolers using carbon nanotubes. The measurement result of the CNT cooler is about 10-15% better than the silicon cooler.