Optimization of Microchannel Heat Sink with Rhombus Fractal-like Units for Electronic Chip Cooling

•A novel microchannel heat sink with rhombus fractal-like units is proposed.•An optimization approach is developed for the design of microchannel heat sink.•Experimental validation of the optimization approach is performed.•Rhombus fractal-like units may effectively reduce pumping power of heat sink. Microchannel heat sink is commonly used as a high-efficiency heat exchanger type in electronic microchips cooling, and the parallel microchannels arranged on the heat sink not only enhance heat transfer area but also result in large pumping power. In this paper, a novel structure of microchannel heat sink with rhombus fractal-like units is proposed for improve the overall performance, and a geometry optimization approach is developed for the design of the new microchannel heat sink. The validation of the geometry optimization approach is performed, and the results show that the predicted pumping power can describe 93% of the experimental data within the deviation limit of ± 5% and the mean deviation is 1.95%. Compared to the conventional parallel microchannel heat sink, the microchannel heat sink with rhombus fractal-like units may increase the COP by 7.9%-68.7% under the same constrains of external size, specified heat flux and maximum temperature limitation, which indicates the rhombus fractal-like units may effectively improve the efficiency of microchannel heat sinks.