Topology optimization of microchannel heat sinks for non-uniform integrated chip systems

The continuous miniaturization and integration of microelectronic devices have posed severe thermal management challenges, particularly under non-uniform heat flux distributions arising from heterogeneous chip systems. To address this issue, we propose a novel microchannel heat sink inspired by a biomimetic lung-like structure. Through density-based topology optimization and 3D conjugate heat transfer modeling within computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, the proposed design effectively reduces the average temperature and flow resistance across varying objective weights and fluid volume fractions. An area-weighted coefficient of variation for heat flux (CV_w) was developed to evaluation over a wide range of heat flux conditions, from nearly uniform (CV_w = 0.049) to highly heterogeneous (CV_w = 0.983). Simulation results reveal that the topology-optimized microchannel (TOMC) heat sink achieves optimal flow-thermal synergy at moderate structural complexity. Specifically, over the CV_w range of 0.049–0.983, the TOMC reduces the temperature variance by 68.3 %–80.7 % compared with the straight microchannel (SMC) heat sink. Under a typical non-uniform thermal load (CV_w = 0.297), the TOMC exhibits a 123.3 % improvement in Nusselt number and a 15.6 % decrease in pressure drop. These findings underscore the potential of the bio-inspired topology optimization framework as an effective solution for thermal regulation in next-generation heterogeneous electronic systems.