Caloric micro-cooling

Published by lahde on September 26, 2020September 26, 2020

Within the ERC project SUPERCOOL and ARRS project J2-1738 we have developed a new, unique numerical model that serves as a tool for parametric analysis and the development of micro-cooling systems for cooling of electronic components based on electrocaloric and elastocaloric materials. An article entitled: Caloric micro-cooling: Numerical modeling and parametric research was published in the Energy Conversion and Management journal (IF = 8.203) and available at the following link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs / pii / S0196890420309560

Cooling of electronic components is one of the most critical problems of the electronics industry. As the power and packing density of electronic components increases, the amount of waste heat generated in a small space rises significantly. Cooling systems based on the caloric effects of ferroic materials show high potential for various cooling and heat- pumping applications due to their potentially high efficiencies and the lack of any environmentally hazardous refrigerants. One of such applications that has recently gained the attention of the scientific community is micro- cooling, which can be applied for hot-spot cooling and thermal management in electronic components. In this study a comprehensive numerical analysis of a caloric micro-cooling system using elastocaloric and electrocaloric materials was performed in order to investigate the limits and potential of this technology. We demonstrated that a caloric micro-cooling system is able to cool down the electronic component below room temperature or at least stabilize it at lower temperatures compared to the case when only passive cooling is applied (with the COP values exceeding 10). The caloric device can effectively cool the electronic component below room temperature at heat flux densities of up to 1 W / cm2. Caloric cooling systems could therefore play an important role as an efficient micro-cooling technology for certain applications, in particular where under-cooling below room temperature (low-temperature electronics) is required.