Embedded Microfluidic Cooling with Energetic Electrolytes for the GaN Device: A Feasibility and Adaptability Investigation

As gallium nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistors advance toward compactness, effective thermal management is critical to maintaining their operational reliability. A synergistic embedded cooling integration system for high-power devices has been proposed, utilizing energetic electrolytes as the coolant. This study reports a comprehensive feasibility and adaptability investigation of the vanadium-based electrolyte microfluidic cooling across five real GaN devices (GS61004B, GS66502B, GS66504B, GS6504-1L, and GS6508-1L). Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed embedded microfluidic cooling effectively reduced the average surface temperature of GaN devices to below 45 °C at a flow rate of 10 mL/min, with hotspot temperatures dropping by over 14% in all tested models. The GS66502B model, in particular, exhibited a 29% reduction in hotspot temperature. Furthermore, the embedded microfluidic cooling strategy improved the electrical characteristics of the devices, increasing output current by an average of 27%, with a 44% improvement observed in model GS6508-1L, thereby preventing power degradation caused by overheating. The system also demonstrated a maximum coefficient of performance of 18,700 at a flow rate of 2 mL/min. This study validates the effectiveness of the proposed embedded microfluidic cooling and offers valuable insights for future high-power density electronics.