Sectional oblique fins are employed in contrast to the continuous fins in order to modulate the flow in microchannel heat sink. Experimental investigation of silicon based oblique finned microchannel heat sink demonstrated a highly augmented and uniform heat transfer performance against the conventional microchannel. The breakage of continuous fin into oblique sections leads to the re-initialization of the thermal boundary layers at the leading edge of each oblique fin, effectively reducing the boundary-layer thickness. This regeneration of the entrance effect causes the flow to be always in a developing state thus resulting in better heat transfer. In addition, the presence of smaller oblique channels diverts a fraction of the flow into the adjacent main channels. The secondary flows thus created improve fluid mixing which serves to further enhance the heat transfer. The average Nusselt number, Nuave, for the silicon microchannel heat sink which uses water as the working fluid can increase as much as 55%, from 8.8 to 13.6. Besides, the augmented convective heat transfer leads to reduction in both maximum chip temperature and its temperature gradient, by 8.6°C and 47% respectively. Interestingly, there is only little or negligible pressure drop penalty associated with this novel heat transfer enhancement scheme in contrast to conventional enhancement techniques.
