A review of the state-of-the-art in electronic cooling

The cooling or thermal management issues are facing critical challenges with the continuous miniaturization and rapid increase of heat flux of electronic devices. Significant efforts have been made to develop high-efficient cooling and flexible thermal management solutions and corresponding design tools. This article reviews the latest progress and the state-of-the-art in electronic cooling, which could help inspire future research. The commonly used methods in electronic cooling, classified into direct and indirect cooling, are reviewed and discussed in detail. Direct cooling consists of air cooling, spray and jet impingement cooling, immersion cooling, and droplet electrowetting. As for indirect cooling, the most popular and hot topics of using microchannel, heat pipe, vapour chamber, thermoelectric, and PCM are overviewed. The effectiveness of the thermal management methods for different-level requirements of electronic cooling and the ways how heat transfer capability can be improved are also introduced in detail. Meanwhile, the pros and cons of these thermal management methods are discussed based on their inherent heat transfer performances/characteristics, optimisation methods, and relevant applications. In addition, the current challenges of electronic cooling and thermal management technologies are explored, along with the outlook of possible future advances.