Communications of the ACM
DARPA Wants Teeny-Tiny Fluids to Cool Down Next-Gen Microchips
An artist's conception of microfluidic channels within a 3-D microchip stack.
Credit: DARPA
U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) researchers want to embed stacked microchips with tiny fluid channels to circulate small drops of water.
The agency issued a solicitation asking the industry to develop designs for microfluidic cooling systems that could be incorporated into microchip stacks, called ICECool.
To stop the water from interfering with the electrical flow of the chips, the system needs to include an insulator coated with water-repellant material. The microchips' electrodes also must be insulated from the drops in order to keep a steady flow.
Other issues to be solved include managing the pressure in order to prevent the water from drying or burning up, and transferring excess heat away from the microchips. Duke University professor Krish Chakrabarty proposes a method to automatically switch off electrodes when they get too hot. Water near those electrodes is then dropped on an indium tin oxide plate between the electrode and the fluids channels, which then absorbs the heat and dissipates it away.
"More generally, proposed approaches should be crafted to be scalable and adaptable to the environment of a modern military electronic system," the DARPA solicitation says.
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