Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulation for On-chip Cooling with Carbon Nanotube Micro-fin Architectures

The 2D CFD simulations have been carried out for a series of CNT micro-fin cooling architectures in this paper. The influence of micro-fin structures, fluid speeds and heating powers on cooling effects have been obtained in the case studies, and the numerical results have been compared with our experiment data. The CFD simulations indicate that the fluid speed is the key factor of heat transfer, and the heat generated on chip is removed by liquid mass flowing in the channels of micro-fin architectures. The pressure drop between inlet and outlet of the cooling device is an important cause limiting the fluid speed, and the excessive pressure drop will destroy the carbon nanotube fin arrays. The harmfulness condition of nanotube array is an unavoidable limitation for cooling capability of carbon nanotube micro-fin structures, and consequently it is necessary to study the harmful situations of carbon nanotube. The simulation results in present work also indicate that the cooling capability of 2D carbon nanotube fin array is more efficient than that of 1D carbon nanotube fin array.