Electrohydrodynamic micropumps with asymmetric electrode geometries for microscale electronics cooling

The development of effective microscale thermal management solutions is important to further advance microscale electronics because of increasing heat flux densities in these devices. There is an increasing trend towards liquid based cooling solutions because of their much higher heat removal capacities compared to air cooling methods. Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) micropumps are ideally suited for these applications due to their small form factor, low power consumption and ability to work with dielectric heat transfer fluids. In addition, EHD micropumps have no moving parts and are amenable to conventional microfabrication techniques. Current EHD micropump designs, however, generate very low flowrates and pressure head to be practically useful. Here, we demonstrate for the first time, that an asymmetry in the electrode geometry (both 2D and 3D) will result in significantly higher pressure generation with lower power consumption than conventional symmetric electrode designs.