A comprehensive review on the use of phase change materials in cooling of electronic board

Electronic devices with different and wide applications must operate under critical temperature for long life and safe operation. Therefore, excess heat must be properly removed from these devices. Recently, the use of phase change materials (PCM) has been considered as one of the effective methods for removing heat from electronic devices. Despite the high energy storage capacity of PCM, the low thermal conductivity of them is a limiting factor for the use of these materials. Therefore, current research has focused on improving the thermal performance of PCM using thermal conductivity enhancer (TCE). Metallic fins, nanoparticles mixed with PCM, and metallic foams are used as thermal conductivity enhancer. In the three methods mentioned as thermal conductivity enhancers, it is observed that the presence of metal fins leads to more uniformity of the base temperature of the heat sink and decreasing the base temperature. The use of nanoparticles provides appropriate and acceptable performance for temperature management of heat sink. Also, metal foams offer good performance due to their higher surface to volume ratio, better heat conductivity and lower weight. In this paper, various studies about enhance PCM performance for cooling electronic components under constant heat load are investigated and compared.