Open-cell aluminum foams with bimodal pore size distributions for emerging thermal management applications

•Replication is used to fabricate open-cell aluminum foams with bimodal cell size.•Coarse (C – 7 mm) and fine (F – 1 mm) cells are combined in different proportions.•The foam containing 67%C-33%F (C67F33) has a remarkable total porosity of 76%.•C67F33 exhibits the highest heat transfer coefficient and the lowest pressure drop.•C67F33 shows excellent thermal efficiency and great potential in thermal management. Recent advances in cellular materials for active thermal management applications involve the integral design of their porous structure. In this work, open-cell aluminum foams with porosities in the range of 0.60–0.76 are developed, containing pores with spherical geometry and a bimodal pore size distribution. The fabrication strategy involves the use of the replication method by infiltration with liquid aluminum of porous preforms formed by packing NaCl spheres of two largely different sizes (7 mm and 1 mm average diameter), which are then removed by water dissolution. The paper describes cellular materials with different proportions of coarse and fine pores. Their detailed characterization by pore volume fraction, pressure drop, permeability, thermal conductivity and heat transfer coefficient is supported by analytical schemes. In addition, these materials were characterized under realistic operating conditions using computational fluid dynamics simulations. The material with 67 percent coarse pores and 33 percent fine pores, which has the highest porosity (and thus permeability), has the most appealing heat dissipation properties with the lowest pressure drops, making it an excellent candidate for emerging thermal management applications in electronic systems. [Display omitted]