MEMS/NEMS
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Professor Yi-Kuen Lee's MEMS/NEMS Group

Project --- The Latest Projects from the lab

Heat Convection in Microchannels: single phase and two-phase flows

The study of heat convection in microchannels initiated from the micro cooling devices for microelectronics made in Stanford University in 1980s. Although there were research results all over the world to characterize the heat transfer performance under different boundary conditions, these results were often contradictory because it was difficult to control all the experimental parameters including the fluid properties, the fluid and thermal conditions at the inlet, outlet and the microchannel walls. Recently, we are able to integrate micro heaters, temperature sensors, piezoresistive pressure sensors with microchannels for two-phase flow study.


Fabricated Device

 


Experimental Result: Active/Non-active Nucleation Sites



BOUNDARY CONDITIONS
Two-Phase Flow: Flow Patterns Visualization

 


Experimental Result:
Two Phase Flow Pattern-Intermittent Flow



Device Packaging



Reference:

M. Lee, L.S.L. Cheung, Y.-K. Lee, M. Wong, Y. Zohar, "Height Effect on Nucleation-Site Activity in Microchannel Convective Boiling," IEEE MEMS 2004, Maastricht, Netherlands, Jan 25-29, pp.300-303, 2004.  

L.S.L. Cheung, Y.-K. Lee, M. Wong and Y. Zohar,"Size-dependent Bubble Dynamics in a Microchannel Heat Sink," IEEE MEM 2005, Miami, USA, pp.670-673, 2005. 

M. Lee, Y.-K. Lee, M. Wong and Y. Zohar, "Fabrication and Characterization of an Integrated Thermal Microsystem," IEEE MEMS 2005, Miami, USA, pp.610-613, 2005. 

M. Lee, LS.L. Cheung, Y.-K. Lee and Y. Zohar, "Height Effect on Nucleation-Site Activity and Size-Dependent Bubble Dynamics in Microchannel Convective Boiling," Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, Vol. 15, pp.1-9, 2005.

Applications:

Single phase flow: thermal micro accelerometers, microchannel-based PCR for DNA amplification.

Two-phase flow: Cooling of Microelectronic chips and laptop computers: micro heat pipe and micro heat sink

Thermal lysing of biological cells. 

Previous works by Prof Yitshak Zohar and his co-workers at HKUST

Book:

Heat Convection in Micro Ducts, Yitshak Zohar, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002.

Research Papers:



--------------------------------------------------------

Prof. Yi-Kuen Lee's MEMS/NEMS Group
Email to Webmaster