SBIR Phase II: Rapid and Accurate Multi-Variable Optimization Software for Arrays of Heat Sinks

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to improve electronics cooling systems. Data and telecommunications centers consume 200 TWhr/yr of energy and produce about 30 million tons of carbon dioxide, with nearly half of these numbers attributable to cooling. The electronics cooling market exceeds $10 billion/year with an 8% compound annual growth rate. The technologies developed here will significantly reduce those numbers, with significant environmental and financial impact, with improved hardware and software. This will benefit many sectors including next-generation 5G-wireless communications, high-performance computing, the Internet of Things, cryptocurrency, and national security. This SBIR Phase II project proposes to develop two complementary technologies for efficient thermal management of electronics. It will add compliancy to the structurally-rigid vapor chambers used for cooling, e.g., multicore processors where vapor chambers thermally couple a single heat sink to the different processor cores. This project will develop a mass production process of compliant vapor chambers accommodating novel forms of capillary wicks integrated with compliant diaphragms. Secondly, the project will develop a heat sink optimization platform for electronics hardware, coupling hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) with a multi-variable optimization (MVO) algorithm. Consequently, it will be the first system to measure the flow field as the heat sinks are reconfigured in real-time during the HIL-informed optimization. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.