A microelectronic test structure and numerical algorithm for characterization of liquid immersion heat transfer

The design, development, and fabrication of a test section for gathering heat transfer data necessary for the efficient design of liquid immersion cooling systems for microelectronic applications is presented. The test section is a wafer scale integrated circuit design which can be mass produced and matches the actual integrated circuits and their geometric and material characteristics. The test section is for use in conjunction with the other experimental apparatus to collect heat transfer data for microelectronic surfaces cooled with liquid coolants. A numerical method for extracting the local heat transfer coefficients from experimental immersion cooling data obtained from the test section is developed. The algorithm removes the effects of thermal spreading, temperature averaging, and conduction temperature drop in the experimental test section. A numerical verification of the analytical method is presented, and experimental results are used to confirm the validity of the numerical algorithm. The algorithm demonstrates the independence of the extracted heat transfer behavior from the size of the test section heater