A review of the critical heat flux condition in mini-and microchannels

With ever increasing power dissipation in electronic chips that are shrinking in size, cooling demands are becoming more severe. Forced air cooling is reaching its operational limits, and single-phase liquid cooling in microchannels has been able to accommodate the rising heat fluxes. Further increases in computing (chip) power suggest that a switch from single-phase to boiling heat transfer will be needed. A major impediment to using boiling or forced convective vaporization for such a cooling application is the limiting critical heat flux (CHF) condition. In this paper, the CHF condition in microchannels is reviewed. Data from the literature are discussed, and new data for a range of operating and geometric conditions are presented. Influencing factors, parametric trends, phenomenological models, and other aspects of the CHF condition are discussed.