Hydrodynamic characterisation of micro-gap geometries for photonics cooling applications

Contemporary Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) packages within the communications network infrastructure have reached a thermal limit. Integrated packages involving microfluidic channels are an appealing development to improve the thermal design of future PIC packages, to significantly improve the removal of heat fluxes in order to sustain the expected enhanced data traffic growth. The Thermally Integrated Smart Photonics Systems (TIPS) project aims to develop and demonstrate a thermally enabled integrated platform that is scalable, to meet the predicted data traffic demands. Full system integration requires an integrated pumping solution, therefore a primary heat exchanger that can deliver the required thermal performance with a low pressure drop (?P) is needed. A channel containing a single array of cylindrical posts offers a low pressure drop, similar to a large hydraulic diameter minichannel. Local destabilization of the flow would provide heat transfer enhancement. In particular, non-Newtonian fluids have been shown to exhibit significant mixing in such configurations. Micro Particle-Image Velocimetry (µPIV) measurements were taken for Newtonian and viscoelastic fluids within this channel. Instabilities associated with the viscoelastic fluid were recorded immediately upstream of the post array. This flow exhibited almost a four-fold increase in mixing at comparable flow rates to the Newtonian fluid tested. This suggests that the Nusselt number enhancement associated with such flows could increase the heat transfer rates quite significantly in microchannels containing obstructions.