Enhancing the thermal performance of microchannel cold plates via controlled bubble injection for next-generation high-power electronic chips

Efficient thermal management has become a critical bottleneck for next-generation high-power electronic devices, as conventional single-phase cooling techniques struggle to maintain performance under rising thermal design powers (TDPs). While microchannel cold plates improve heat dissipation by increasing the surface area and disrupting boundary layers, their performance is still constrained under high thermal loads, particularly with next-generation chips that have TDPs exceeding 700 W. To address this limitation, this study proposes a hybrid cooling strategy that integrates microchannel cold plates with active bubble injection. In the first phase of the study, baseline tests at TDPs of 560–800 W and flow rates of 0.5–1.5 l/ min showed that microchanneling reduced surface temperature by up to 14.6 °C and thermal resistance by 18.6% compared with smooth plates. In the second phase, air was injected through one to five outlet branches at a constant rate of 0.2 l/ min to identify the optimal configuration using the thermal performance factor (TP). The effect of air injection rate (0.2–1 l/min ) was then examined. The optimal hydrothermal condition (TP = 1.2) occurred with four branches and an injection rate of 0.4 l/min , yielding a 20.1 °C temperature reduction, a 43% enhancement in the Nusselt number, and a 25.5% drop in thermal resistance compared to the plain cold plate. The energy reuse potential of this method was assessed alongside the hydrothermal performance. Results show that integrating recycled data-center energy can raise the Energy Reuse Factor (ERF) by up to 84% without exceeding safe chip temperatures, demonstrating strong applicability for next-generation high-power CPU cooling systems.