An overview of conjugate heat transfer augmentation methods for thermal management and recent advancements in microchannel heat sink overall performance

Recent technological advancement creates high-dense circuits development which creates colossal cooling demand requirements. In the future, advanced technology and scientific applications need to balance heat fluxes beyond limitation that catalyse the research opportunities further to achieve cooling requirements. Conventional cooling equipment is inappropriate for extracting heat from microchips within the minimal surface area. Microchannel technology appeared as a next-generation heat exchanger for the given heat duty. In the classical case of accounting, micro-heat exchangers both axial and transverse wall conduction effects is usually neglected. However, from the year 2005 onwards, researchers identified conduction dominance at fluid velocity is zero zones at the interface, which created balance between conduction–convection currents, finally included axial wall/heat conduction effects to a general model. This present study made a comparative evaluation fluid flow, heat transfer characteristics, thermal performance (TP) based on geometrical parameters, substrate materials and discusses previous issues, and current issues-based future research directions. Till today, based on applications of microchannels in thermal management, several experimental and numerical investigations have been reported for further improvement in TP. However, many researchers are still trying to accomplish things over a long period. Therefore, an overview of previous studies is furnished in the present study to assist researchers in this area much useful for further improvement.