Experimental assessment of on-chip liquid cooling through microchannels with de-ionized water and diluted ethylene glycol

Recent progress in Si IC devices, which results in an increase in power density and decrease in device size, poses various thermal challenges owing to high heat dissipation. Therefore, conventional cooling techniques become ineffective and produce a thermal bottleneck. In this study, an on-chip liquid cooling module with microchannels and through Si via (TSV) was fabricated, and cooling characteristics were evaluated by IR measurements. Both the microchannels and TSVs were fabricated in a Si wafer by deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) and the wafer was bonded with a glass wafer by a anodic bonding. The fabricated liquid cooling sample was evaluated using two different coolants (de-ionized water and 70 wt % diluted ethylene glycol), and the effect of coolants on cooling characteristics was investigated.