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Design and Additive Manufacturing of Copper Heat Sinks for Microelectronics Cooling

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Thermal management is a critical aspect of microelectronics packaging and often centers around preventing central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) from overheating. As the need for power going into these processors increases, so too does the need for more effective thermal management strategies. One such strategy is…

Thermal management is a critical aspect of microelectronics packaging and often centers around preventing central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) from overheating. As the need for power going into these processors increases, so too does the need for more effective thermal management strategies. One such strategy is to utilize additive manufacturing to fabricate heat sinks with bio-inspired and cellular structures and is the focus of this thesis. In this study, a process was developed for manufacturing the copper alloy CuNi2SiCr on the 100w Concept Laser Mlab laser powder bed fusion 3D printer to obtain parts that were 94% dense, while dealing with challenges of low absorptivity in copper and its high potential for oxidation. The developed process was then used to manufacture and test heat sinks with traditional pin and fin designs to establish a baseline cooling effect, as determined from tests conducted on a substrate, CPU and heat spreader assembly. Two additional heat sinks were designed, the first of these being bio-inspired and the second incorporating Triply Periodic Minimal Surface (TPMS) cellular structures, with the aim of trying to improve the cooling effect relative to commercial heat sinks. The results showed that the pure copper commercial pin-design heat sink outperformed the additive manufactured (AM) pin-design heat sink under both natural and forced convection conditions due to its approximately tenfold higher thermal conductivity, but that the gap in performance could be bridged using the bio-inspired and Schwarz-P heat sink designs developed in this work and is an encouraging indicator that further improvements could be obtained with improved alloys, heat treatments and even more innovative designs.
ContributorsYaple, Jordan Marie (Author) / Bhate, Dhruv (Thesis advisor) / Azeredo, Bruno (Committee member) / Phelan, Patrick (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
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Reducing The Scale of Steam Generators in Pressurized Water Reactors

Description
Nuclear power has recently experienced a resurgence in interest due to its ability to generate significant amounts of relatively clean energy. However, the overall size of nuclear power plants still poses a problem to future advancements. The bulkiness of components in the plant contribute to longer construction times, higher building…

Nuclear power has recently experienced a resurgence in interest due to its ability to generate significant amounts of relatively clean energy. However, the overall size of nuclear power plants still poses a problem to future advancements. The bulkiness of components in the plant contribute to longer construction times, higher building and maintenance costs, and the isolation of nuclear plants from populated areas. The goal of this project was to analyze the thermal performance of nanocrystalline copper tantalum (NC Cu-Ta) inside the steam generator of a pressurized water reactor to see how much the size of these units could be reduced without affecting the amount of heat transferred through it. The analysis revealed that using this material, with its higher thermal conductivity than the traditional Inconel Alloy 600 that is typically used in steam generators, it is possible to reduce the height of a steam generator from 21 meters to about 18.6 meters, signifying a 11.6% reduction in height. This analysis also revealed a diminishing return that occurs with increasing the thermal conductivity on both reducing the required heat transfer area and increasing the overall heat transfer coefficient.
ContributorsRiese, Alexander (Author) / Phelan, Patrick (Thesis director) / Bocanegra, Luis (Committee member) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05