Design and Thermal Management Study of a Liquid-Cooled Plate Heat Sink for High-Power Semiconductor Devices

Temperature variations directly affect the electrical performance and reliability of high-power semiconductor devices. Therefore, to prevent semiconductor devices from overheating and to ensure stable operation, the design of efficient heat sinks to enhance the thermal management of microchips is particularly critical. This work focuses on high-power IGBT modules as a representative application and addresses the challenges of high thermal-failure risk and stringent temperature uniformity under high power-density operation by proposing a novel liquid-cooled plate (LCP) heat sink integrating serpentine channels, cooling fins, and staggered turbulence promoters. The serpentine channel increases the contact time between the coolant and the IGBT, enhancing heat exchange, while the additional fins enlarge the heat transfer area, further improving dissipation. Additionally, various turbulence promoters are introduced into the flow channels to disrupt laminar flow and induce turbulence, thereby increasing the heat transfer coefficient and thermal exchange efficiency. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are employed to analyze the thermal performance of the LCP heat sink, and experimental comparisons are conducted to evaluate the effects of different turbulence promoter structures and distributions on temperature uniformity. Simulation results indicate that the inclusion of turbulence promoters reduces the IGBT maximum temperature from 369.48 K to 343.94 K, while the alternating arrangement of promoters significantly improves temperature uniformity, maximizing thermal performance. Experimental results indicate that increasing the coolant flow rate can lower the maximum IGBT temperature by up to 22 K, with performance stabilizing at 8.5 L/min. Moreover, when the spacing of the heat dissipation fins is 3.5 mm, the temperature of the LCP reaches its minimum, approximately 3 K lower than that observed with other spacing configurations.