Thermoregulated Microvalve for Self-Adaptive Microfluidic Cooling

This work aims at developing a passive and thermoregulated microvalve in order to manage a local and adaptive cooling for microelectronics. Such microvalve can serve as flow regulators in an array of liquid cooling cells below a chip. Two Ag valves of 2000 and 1733 mu m long each are designed, microfabricated and experimentally tested to validate their proper use in this cooling context. The 1733 mu m valve opening has shifted from 2 to 24.7 mu m, when exposed to a hot plate at room temperature and at 80 degrees C respectively, demonstrating a significant fluidic cross-section shift. The valve also stayed in its elastic deformation range up to 160 degrees C. Finally, the 1733 mu m microvalve demonstrated that it was possible to regulate water flow rate from <0.5 to 3.0 ml/min at a constant pressure drop of 5 kPa. This makes the microvalve a suitable organ for thermoregulating the cooling cells matrices.