Demonstration of high-performance silicon microchannel heat exchangers for laser diode array cooling

Abstract

A heat exchanger package has been demonstrated for semiconductor laser arrays using silicon microstructures with water as the coolant. A thermal impedance of 0.04 °C cm2/W has been achieved for a single linear bar. This design makes use of efficient, edge-emitting laser diode arrays in a rack and stack architecture combined with a high-performance silicon microchannel structure to allow cw operation. The architecture can be scaled to large areas and we project a thermal impedance of 0.09 °C cm2/W for close-packed two-dimensional arrays on this device.