Boiling heat transfer of a novel environmentally friendly fluorinating coolant: From fundamental research to application

The rapid development of artificial intelligence pushed chip power density to unprecedented levels, making thermal management a critical bottleneck. Although boiling heat transfer offered efficient cooling, conventional enhancement methods exhibited clear limitations: surface modification technologies were approaching their physical and manufacturing limits at micro/nano scales, while external energy fields (such as acoustic, electric, or magnetic fields) increased system complexity and energy consumption. This study addressed the challenge through working fluid innovation and introduced MCLC-10—an environmentally friendly refrigerant characterized by a low global warming potential (≤10) and a near-zero ozone depletion potential. A comprehensive comparison with the industry's most widely used refrigerant, R1233zd(E), demonstrated MCLC-10's superior performance advantages. On smooth surfaces, it improved the critical heat flux by 12–14% and enhanced the heat transfer coefficient by 32–36%. Under pressurized conditions with micro-pin-fin enhancement, it achieved a critical heat flux of 96 W·cm−2 and a peak heat transfer coefficient of 13.56 W·cm−2·K−1. In a three-dimensional thermosyphon module, MCLC-10 stably sustained a heat dissipation power of 1200 W (thermal resistance: 0.068 K·W−1) and withstood a heat flux of 128 W·cm−2 (thermal resistance: 0.117 K·W−1), outperforming R1233zd(E) across all key metrics. These results established MCLC-10 as a high-performance, eco-friendly alternative solution for next-generation thermal management, providing both experimental evidence and design guidance for cooling high heat flux electronic devices.