An Alternative Method for the Cooling of Power Microelectronics Using Classical Refrigeration

Classical refrigeration using vapor compression has been widely applied over the past decades to large-scale industrial systems, with few known applications to the microelectronic cooling field, due to the small size limitation. The present study proposes an efficient mechanical refrigeration system to actively cool the electronic components populating a printed circuit board in high-power microelectronic system. The proposed system includes several miniaturized components—compressor, evaporator, and condenser—part of a refrigeration system designed to fit the smaller scale power electronics. The system is thermally optimized to reach high coefficients of performance (COPs). An array of microchannels is used for the evaporator/condenser units. A previous study indicated that the R-134s refrigerant provides the best COP/feasibility ratio, while being the most suitable for microelectronic applications (Phelan, et al., “Designing a Mesoscale Vapor Compression Refrigerator for Cooling High-Power Microelectronics,” Proceedings of the ITHERM’04, Las Vegas, NV). The present study develops an analytical model of the proposed small scale vapor-compression refrigerator using the R-134a refrigerant. The refrigeration system is thermally optimized for cooling powers ranging from 20 W to 100 W, with the COP of the system reaching values up to 4.5. The advantages of the proposed system are highlighted, establishing a baseline performance versus size relationship for vapor-compression refrigerators, to serve as the basis for comparison for future miniaturized refrigeration systems.