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The electronics packaging community strongly believes that Moore’s law will continue for another few years due to recent technological efforts to build heterogeneously integrated packages. Heterogeneous integration (HI) can be at the chip level (a single chip with multiple hotspots), in multi-chip modules, or in vertically stacked three-dimensional (3D) integrated circuits. Flux values have increased exponentially with a simultaneous reduction in chip size and a significant increase in performance, leading to increased heat dissipation. The electronics industry and the academic research community have examined various solutions to tackle skyrocketing thermal-management challenges. Embedded cooling eliminates most sequential conduction resistance from the chip to the ambient, unlike separable cold plates/ heat sinks. Although embedding the cooling solution onto an electronic chip results in a high heat transfer potential, technological risks and complexity are still associated with the implementation of these technologies and with uncertainty regarding which technologies will be adopted. This manuscript discusses recent advances in embedded cooling, fluid selection considerations, and conventional, immersion, and additive manufacturing-based embedded cooling technologies. 

More than ever before, data centers must deploy robust thermal solutions to adequately host the high-density and high-performance computing that is in high demand. The newer generation of central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) has substantially higher thermal power densities than previous generations. In recent years, more data centers rely on liquid cooling for the high-heat processors inside the servers and air cooling for the remaining low-heat information technology equipment. This hybrid cooling approach creates a smaller and more efficient data center. The deployment of direct-to-chip cold plate liquid cooling is one of the mainstream approaches to providing concentrated cooling to targeted processors. In this study, a processor-level experimental setup was developed to evaluate the cooling performance of a novel computer numerical control (CNC) machined nickel-plated impinging cold plate on a 1 in.  1 in. mock heater that represents a functional processing unit. The pressure drop and thermal resistance performance curves of the electroless nickel-plated cold plate are compared to those of a pure copper cold plate. A temperature uniformity analysis is done using compuational fluid dynamics and compared to the actual test data. Finally, the CNC machined pure copper one is compared to other reported cold plates to demonstrate its superiority of the design with respect to the cooling performance. 

Purpose AlSi10Mg alloy is commonly used in laser powder bed fusion due to its printability, relatively high thermal conductivity, low density and good mechanical properties. However, the thermal conductivity of as-built materials as a function of processing (energy density, laser power, laser scanning speed, support structure) and build orientation, are not well explored in the literature. This study aims to elucidate the relationship between processing, microstructure, and thermal conductivity. Design/methodology/approach The thermal conductivity of laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) AlSi10Mg samples are investigated by the flash diffusivity and frequency domain thermoreflectance (FDTR) techniques. Thermal conductivities are linked to the microstructure of L-PBF AlSi10Mg, which changes with processing conditions. The through-plane exceeded the in-plane thermal conductivity for all energy densities. A co-located thermal conductivity map by frequency domain thermoreflectance (FDTR) and crystallographic grain orientation map by electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) was used to investigate the effect of microstructure on thermal conductivity. Findings The highest through-plane thermal conductivity (136 ± 2 W/m-K) was achieved at 59 J/mm 3 and exceeded the values reported previously. The in-plane thermal conductivity peaked at 117 ± 2 W/m-K at 50 J/mm 3 . The trend of thermal conductivity reducing with energy density at similar porosity was primarily due to the reduced grain size producing more Al-Si interfaces that pose thermal resistance. At these interfaces, thermal energy must convert from electrons in the aluminum to phonons in the silicon. The co-located thermal conductivity and crystallographic grain orientation maps confirmed that larger colonies of columnar grains have higher thermal conductivity compared to smaller columnar grains. Practical implications The thermal properties of AlSi10Mg are crucial to heat transfer applications including additively manufactured heatsinks, cold plates, vapor chambers, heat pipes, enclosures and heat exchangers. Additionally, thermal-based nondestructive testing methods require these properties for applications such as defect detection and simulation of L-PBF processes. Industrial standards for L-PBF processes and components can use the data for thermal applications. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to make coupled thermal conductivity maps that were matched to microstructure for L-PBF AlSi10Mg aluminum alloy. This was achieved by a unique in-house thermal conductivity mapping setup and relating the data to local SEM EBSD maps. This provides the first conclusive proof that larger grain sizes can achieve higher thermal conductivity for this processing method and material system. This study also shows that control of the solidification can result in higher thermal conductivity. It was also the first to find that the build substrate (with or without support) has a large effect on thermal conductivity. 

Abstract The increased power consumption and continued miniaturization of high-powered electronic components have presented many challenges to their thermal management. To improve the efficiency and reliability of these devices, the high amount of heat that they generate must be properly removed. In this paper, a three-dimensional numerical model has been developed and experimentally validated for several manifold heat sink designs. The goal was to enhance the heat sink's thermal performance while reducing the required pumping power by lowering the pressure drop across the heat sink. The considered designs were benchmarked to a commercially available heat sink in terms of their thermal and hydraulic performances. The proposed manifolds were designed to distribute fluid through alternating inlet and outlet branched internal channels. It was found that using the manifold design with 3 channels reduced the thermal resistance from 0.061 to 0.054 °C/W with a pressure drop reduction of 0.77 kPa from the commercial cold plate. A geometric parametric study was performed to investigate the effect of the manifold's internal channel width on the thermohydraulic performance of the proposed designs. It was found that the thermal resistance decreased as the manifold's channel width decreased, up until a certain width value, below which the thermal resistance started to increase while maintaining low-pressure drop values. Where the thermal resistance significantly decreased in the 7 channels design by 16.4% and maintained a lower pressure drop value below 0.6 kPa.