Prospects of confined flow boiling in thermal management of microsystems

This paper presents a review of prospects of confined flow boiling in future thermal management of microsystems such as microelectronics, optoelectronics, and microreactors. With the trend towards miniaturisation, heat removal has become the major bottleneck in microsystem development. In view of this we briefly discuss available cooling strategies, then assess studies of confined flow boiling and potential applications in heat dissipation from microsystems. Challenging issues related to implementation of the technique are addressed. It is concluded that confined flow boiling will be an attractive option for microsystem cooling. However, primary targets such as high critical heat flux and a stable, predictable nucleate boiling regime need to be achieved before this technique can be used in practice.