Passive Cooling Analysis of an Electronic Chipset Using Nanoparticles and Metal-Foam Composite PCM: An Experimental Study

Abstract

Thermal management of electronic components is critical for long-term reliability and continuous operation, as the over-heating of electronic equipment leads to decrement in performance. The novelty of the current experimental study is to investigate the passive cooling of electronic equipment, by using nano-enriched phase change material (NEPCM) with copper foam having porosity of 97%. The phase change material of PT-58 was used with graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) and magnesium oxide (MgO) nanoparticles (NPs), having concentrations of 0.01 wt.% and 0.02 wt.%. Three power levels of 8 W, 16 W, and 24 W, with corresponding heating inputs of 0.77 kW/m2, 1.54 kW/m2 and 2.3 kW/m2, respectively, were used to simulate the heating input to heat sink for thermal characterization. According to results, at 0.77 kW/m2 heating input the maximum base temperature declined by 13.03% in 0.02 wt.% GNPs-NEPCM/copper foam case. At heating input of 1.54 kW/m2, the maximum base temperature reduction of 16% was observed in case of 0.02 wt.% GNPs-NEPCM/copper foam and 13.1% in case of 0.02 wt.% MgO-NEPCM/copper foam. Similarly, at heating input of 2.3 kW/m2, the maximum temperature of base lessened by 12.58% in case of 0.02 wt.% GNPs-NEPCM/copper foam. The highest time to reach the set point temperature of 50 °C, 60 °C, and 70 °C was in case of GNPs-NEPCM/copper foam composites, while at all power levels MgO-NEPCM/copper foam gave comparable performance to GNPs based composite. Similar trend was observed in the study of enhancement ratio in operation time. From the results, it is concluded that the copper foam incorporation in NEPCM is an effective measure to mitigate the heat sink base temperature and can provide best cooling efficiency at low and higher heating loads.