Analysis and control of vapor bubble growth inside solid-state nanopores

The increasing demands of computational power have accelerated the development of 3D circuits in the semiconductor industry. To resolve the accompanying thermal issues, two-phase microchannel heat exchangers using have emerged as one of the promising solutions for cooling purposes. However, the direct boiling in microchannels and rapid bubble growth give rise to highly unstable heat flux on the channel walls. In this regard, it is hence desired to control the supply of vapor bubbles for the elimination of the instability. In this research, we investigate a controllable bubble generation technique, which is capable of periodically producing bubble seeds at the sub-micron scale. These nanobubbles were generated in a solid-state nanopore filled with a highly concentrated electrolyte solution. As an external electric field was applied, the localized Joule heating inside the nanopore initiated the homogeneous bubble nucleation. The bubble dynamics was analyzed by measuring the ionic current variation through the nanopore during the bubble nucleation and growth. Meanwhile, we theoretically examined the bubble growth and collapse inside the nanopore by a moving boundary model. In both approaches, we demonstrated that by altering the pore size, the available sensible heat for the bubble growth can be manipulated, thereby offering the controllability of the bubble size. This unique characteristic renders nanopores suitable as a nanobubble emitter for microchannel heat exchangers, paving the way for the next generation microelectronic cooling applications.