Development of microfluidic packaging strategies, with emphasis on the development of a MEMS based micro loop heat pipe

This dissertation describes the development of mini and micro packaging strategies for projects: (1) bio compatible collapsible reservoir for a pre-prototype lab-on-a-chip; and (2) the complete development of a very novel micro loop heat pipe. In the latter case (LHP) a small 1x1 cm. MEMS (micro electro mechanical systems) based silicon LHP cell was developed and tested, which is intended as a pre-prototype for arbitrary lateral planar expansion in multiple cells for cooling electronic chips and other systems, in terrestrial and space applications (e.g. solar cell farms for energy beaming back to earth). The author as a member of a team of MEMS researchers and thermal science researchers, concentrated mainly on packaging research and development, and measurement issues.; The micro loop heat pipe is unique in that the wick is planar, is made of semiconductor grade silicon and is fabricated by the unique application of a photon enhanced micro-patterned anisotropic electrochemical process (developed elsewhere for other applications but refined in this lab), locally referred to as "coherent porous silicon". The resulting micro-capillary arrays were in the low micron range, with up to several million such through-capillaries per square centimeter. Also "quartz wool" has been demonstrated to serve well as a secondary or even primary wick with multi-micron effective pore size and porosity in the range of 95 percent.; In the packaging works, several unique processes have been developed, or applied, including new bonding techniques, new instrumentation approaches and new application of ultrasonic impact grinding to form otherwise unattainable MEMS packaging systems.; Cooling has been demonstrated up to about 60Watts/cm2 , while maintaining top cap temperatures well bellow military specifications for microelectronics. Calculated cooling of over 300°C has been achieved in this passive device which requires no pumps or external power. However it is believed that improvements are possible to give a five fold increase in performance.; This work has been sponsored in part by NSF, NASA, EPRI and DARPA.