This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project proposes to demonstrate the feasibility of designing and fabricating a Microscale Ion Driven Air Flow heat sink device. The heat removal rate required to maintain the temperature of consumer electronics at an acceptable level is increasing at an exponential rate. In spite of the rise in heat fluxes, cooling electronics with air continues to be the preferred method of thermal management because of its low cost and simplicity. However, conventional heat-sinking devices are not able to achieve these heat transfer rates in small portable electronics such as laptop computers. The proposed device has the potential to dissipate the same amount of heat as a conventional fan and heat sink, but in 1/10th the size. To prove the viability of this technology, a series of targeted models and experiments will be run. The program will culminate with a system level feasibility study that will demonstrate, through models and experiments, the ability of this technology to cool electronic equipment. The commercial application of this project is a heat sink for use with small portable electronic devices such as laptop computers. The goal of this research is to develop and produce a compact heat sink that will be completely noiseless, lightweight, smaller and cheaper than any other air-cooled heat-sinking device. The heat sink will have broad commercialization potential, particularly in laptop computers, future cell phones, and other mobile computing applications. It will allow the use of high-performance CPUs in these small portable packages. This will also facilitate further miniaturization and integration of computer chips
