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Micro-pin-finned Surfaces with Fractal Treelike Hydrophilic

Networks for Flow Boiling Enhancement
Bo Yuan, Lei Liu, Chenyi Cui, Jiabin Fang,* Yonghai Zhang, and Jinjia Wei*
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ABSTRACT: Due to its outstanding heat transfer performance,

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flow boiling has a wide range of applications in many fields,

especially for cooling of electronic devices. Previous studies have
shown that the liquid replenishment on the downstream of the
heating surface is the critical restriction of the increase of the
critical heat flux (CHF). In this work, we designed a series of
heterogeneous surfaces with fractal treelike hydrophilic networks
for flow boiling enhancement. The micro-pin-finned surface
structures are expected to increase the CHF and reduce the
superheat by its high wickability. Moreover, by virtue of the
efficient transport capacity of treelike networks, the fractal
hydrophilic paths are designed to serve as the liquid delivery channels for the liquid replenishment on the downstream of the
heating surface. The heterogeneous surfaces improve the comprehensive boiling heat transfer performance, especially the CHF,
which is 82.2% higher than that of the smooth surface and 5.4% higher than the surface homogeneously covered by the
microstructure with twice of the extended surface area. This work provides reference for the design of heterogeneous surfaces with
both smooth and structured parts to increase the flow boiling CHF to some extent.
KEYWORDS: boiling, fractal, critical heat flux, heat transfer coefficient, bubble behavior

1. INTRODUCTION ity, etc.).9 The most reported heterogeneous surface was a

The development of new information technologies represented combination of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces.
by artificial intelligence and cloud computing has increasingly Generally speaking, hydrophilic boiling surfaces are beneficial
higher requirements for computing capabilities, which calls for to the liquid supply and improve the critical heat flux (CHF).
a powerful computer infrastructure.1 The rapid development of On the other hand, hydrophobic surfaces exhibit a lower onset
high-performance computers and other electronic devices are nucleate boiling temperature and higher heat transfer
calling for a substantial increase of heat dissipation capacity.2 coefficient (HTC).10 The reasonable combination of these
characteristics will hopefully achieve excellent comprehensive
The power densities at the hot spots of high-performance
heat transfer performance. Surfaces with multi-path parallel
electronic chips can reach up to 1000 W/cm2, which far
strips were widely studied.10−13 It was indicated that the
exceeds the heat dissipation capacity of the most used air or
optimized width of hydrophilic region was to obtain isolated
water cooling methods.3 Phase-change heat transfer methods
vapor bubbles on hydrophobic parts without combination
via boiling has become one of the most hopeful solutions
across multiple channels, which was the least favorable.10 The
owing to its ultra-high heat transfer efficiency. Furthermore,
direction of the strips also had an influence on the bubble
boiling heat transfer has already been utilized in the thermal
behaviors and heat transfer performance. Owing to the
management of high-power density system such as data
function of restricting bubbles from expanding in an axial
centers,4 high-power lighting equipment,5 and especially for
direction, the HTC of the perpendicularly arranged surface was
integrated electronics.6 Flow boiling, making use of both the
improved compared to the bare surface, which was higher than
latent heat of phase-change and the forced convection, has
the results of parallelly arranged surface.13 The effects of
been used for heat dissipation under extreme conditions such
as for cooling of nuclear reactor fuel rods and for nuclear
accident management.7,8 Received: June 16, 2021
Further enhancement of boiling heat transfer has become Accepted: September 27, 2021
one of the important issues in both academic and industrial Published: October 4, 2021
communities. Most efforts were focused on the utilization of
enhanced surface, especially heterogeneous surfaces with
verified surface properties (microstructure, wettability, poros-

© 2021 American Chemical Society https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.1c11250

48189 ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2021, 13, 48189−48195
ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
hydrophobic-patterned array on the flow boiling performance
were also tested,14−16 and it showed the capacity on enhancing
both the HTC and CHF. Heterogeneous surfaces with
microstructure also illustrated its capacity on improving the
boiling heat transfer performance by promoting the liquid
replenishment under high heat fluxes.17−19
For the enhancement of boiling heat transfer performance,
an efficient liquid delivery is of critical importance especially
for high heat flux conditions. The treelike fractal structure
network has advantages such as lower flow resistance,20,21
higher heat transfer efficiency,22,23 better temperature uni-
formity,20,24 and robustness.25 It has attracted widespread
attention in many applications such as in flow distrib-
utors,26−28 microfluidic devices,29 and for microelectronic
cooling,30,31 and so on. In 1926, Murray proposed an
optimization principle that the energy needed to drive and
maintain the blood circulation was the least.32 This principle
was called as “Murray’s law” for the guidance of fractal
structure design. Following the guidelines of Murray’s law,
extensive and in-depth research was carried out on the
transport phenomena and properties in treelike networks.
For most of the previous studies, there is a lack of a specially
designed surface for flow boiling, where the heat transfer
condition varies along the flow direction. The vapor blankets
assembling on the downstream of the heating surface led to the
worst boiling heat transfer situation.33 In this work, we
designed a series of micro-pin-finned surfaces with fractal
treelike hydrophilic networks for flow boiling enhancement.
The micro-pin-finned surface structures were expected to
increase the CHF and reduce the superheat by its high
wickability. Moreover, by virtue of the efficient transport
capacity of treelike networks, the fractal hydrophilic paths were
designed to serve as the directional liquid delivery channel for
the liquid replenishment on the downstream of the heating
surface.
2. EXPERIMENTAL SECTION
To investigate the effects of micro-pin-finned surfaces with fractal
treelike hydrophilic networks on the flow boiling heat transfer
performance, we fabricated a series of fractal surfaces as shown in
Figure 1a. Square micro-pin-finned arrays were fabricated by the dry
etching technique, and there are fractal treelike smooth networks
Figure 1. (a) Photographs and (b,c) scanning electron microscopy
images of the different surfaces.
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within the structured surface for liquid delivery. A high and narrow
structure can achieve higher capillary wicking force benefitting the
supply of liquid. However, on the other hand, a narrow structure also
leads to a higher flow resistance for liquid flowing into the fins.34 To
create a balance of the capillary wicking effect and the flow resistance,
micro-pin-fins with dimensions of 50−100−120 μm (width−pitch−
height) were chosen for the current experiments.35
Totally five different surfaces with the fractal order from 0 to 4
were designed in the current experiments named F0 to F4,
respectively. The fraction of the micro-pin-finned region was kept
the same as 50% for all heterogeneous surfaces. The details of fractal
surface design are provided in Section S1 of Supporting Information.
Meanwhile, to illustrate the effects of the fractal design, two surfaces
with multi-path parallel smooth and structured strips of different
widths were tested for comparison named P3 and P5, whose fraction
of the structured surface area was also 50%. The bare smooth silicon
surface (named Chip S) and the surface homogeneously covered by
micro-pin-finned structure (named FULL) were also tested for
comparison. The wickability test can be seen in Supporting
Information movie, taking surface F4 as an example. The liquid
droplet was wicked into the micropillar array rapidly and it revealed a
high wickability of the structured surface. The working fluid FC-72
was a low surface tension dielectric fluid, and the bare silicon surface
exhibited strong hydrophilicity as per the contact angle test as shown
in Section S2 of Supporting Information. The details of experimental
setup and procedure and the uncertainty analysis are given in Sections
S3 and S4 of Supporting Information. The heat loss was estimated by
simulation using ANSYS 18.1, and the detailed method is introduced
in Section S5 of Supporting Information. The repeatability and
hysteresis test are shown in Section S6 of Supporting Information.
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
3.1. Boiling Curves and HTCs. The boiling curves of
different fractal surfaces with flow velocity (U) of 0.25 m/s are
illustrated in Figure 2a, and the results of Chip S and FULL are
also plotted for comparison. The CHF points are marked by
arrows in the figure. The heat transfer performance of all the
fractal surfaces are improved as compared to the Chip S due to
the extended surface area and wickability of the micro-pin-
finned structure. The boiling curves of fractal surfaces shift to
the left side with an increase of fractal order from F0 to F3,
which indicates an improvement of heat transfer performance
especially for surface F3 whose boiling curve is close to that of
the surface FULL. The results indicate a similar heat transfer
performance for fractal surfaces with only half of the extended
surface area. The tendency still holds as the flow velocity
increases (see Section S7 of Supporting Information).
However, with further increase of the fractal order, the
boiling curve of surface F4 moves to the right side obviously as
shown in Figure 2a, which means a deterioration of the heat
transfer performance. To further declare this result, Figure 2b
illustrates the variation of boiling HTC (BHTC) of different
surfaces, taking U = 0.25 m/s and q = 30 W/cm2 condition as
an example. The abscissa of the figure represents the width of
the first-ordered smooth path of fractal surfaces, and the widths
of the straight smooth paths are taken for parallel striated
surfaces. With the increase of fractal order (the decrease of
Δx), the BHTC increases from F0 to F3. However, within the
range of Δx = 2.1−2.5 mm (from F3 to F4), the BHTC drops
suddenly and it continues to increase with further decrease of
Δx. The occurrence of this turning point indicates the
variation of heat transfer mechanism on the heating surface,
which can be tried to explore by the bubble behaviors.
Figure 2c−e illustrate the bubble behaviors of fractal surfaces
F0, F3, and F4 with U = 0.25 m/s and q = 30 W/cm2. As
shown in the figure, there are more bubbles generated on the
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Figure 2. (a) Boiling curves for different surfaces (U = 0.25 m/s); (b) BHTC of different fractal surfaces (U = 0.25 m/s and q = 30 W/cm2), and
(c−e) bubble behaviors on F0, F3, and F4 (U = 0.25 m/s and q = 30 W/cm2).
micro-pin-finned parts of the heterogeneous surfaces, which
represents an easier nucleation on the structured surface. This
is related to the difference of energy barrier needed for
nucleation on different surfaces. For the nucleation, the surface
energy of a single bubble is36
Es = 2πr 2(1 + cos θ )σlv + π (1 − f )(r sin θ )2 σlv
+ πf (r sin θ )2 σsv (1)
where σlv and σsv are the liquid−vapor and solid−vapor surface
tension, respectively. θ is the contact angle and r is the radius
of bubbles. f is the solid fraction, which is calculated as the
ratio of the top area of the microstructure to the projected area
of the repeating lattice. It equals to 1 for the smooth surface
and equals to 0.25 for the current micro-pin-finned surface.
Regardless, the radius difference of bubbles between the
different surfaces, the required surface energy difference
between the smooth and micro-pin-finned surfaces is
ΔEs = 0.75π(r sin θ )2 (σsv − σlv) (2)
As a result, the bubbles are preferentially generated on the
structured part of a heterogeneous surface with both smooth
and structured parts, and the nucleation on the smooth part
can be triggered only if the relative superheat between the
smooth and structured parts is high enough to overcome the
required surface energy difference. On the other hand, the
edges and corners of the micro-pin-finned structure provide
more nucleation sites and the vapor trapped between the fins
also benefits the nucleation.37 As the nucleation boiling
happening on the structured part dissipates most of the heat
input, the relative superheat of the central smooth surface is
reduced, which causes nucleation difficulties. In the case of
bubbles generated on the edge of the structured and smooth
parts, it would prefer to move to the smooth surface if ∂ES/∂l1
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< 0 is satisfied,38 where l1 is the length of the vapor covering
the pin fin.
In the current experiments, only one thermocouple was fixed
on the center of the bottom of the chip, which fails to reflect
the temperature distribution of the entire silicon chip. To
remedy this problem, a simulation using ANSYS Fluent 18.1
was carried out for the qualitative description of the
temperature distribution, and the details of the simulation
can be seen in Section S8 of Supporting Information. The
nucleation boiling can still be triggered on the smooth part of
the surface when the width of the central smooth path is wide
enough to maintain the relative superheat. However, it tends to
reduce with the increase of fractal order as shown in Figure S8,
and the temperature distribution of the heterogeneous surface
becomes uniform gradually. With further approach of
structured surfaces (from F3 to F4), the nucleation can be
inhibited when the relative superheat of the smooth surface is
not enough to overcome the required energy barrier as shown
in Figure 2e. In other words, the nucleation process on the
smooth part is inhibited by the neighboring structured parts on
a heterogeneous surface. Due to the absence of high efficient
nucleation boiling process on the central smooth path of
surface F4, the heat transfer process of this part can be
maintained only by a forced convection whose HTC is much
lower, and it leads to a higher tested temperature. With a
further decrease in the width of the smooth path, the absence
of nucleation boiling on smooth paths continues to occur for
parallel striated surfaces P3 and P5. However, compared to the
fractal surface F4, the narrower smooth paths lead to a more
uniform temperature distribution, which reduces the tested
temperature and increases the BHTC as shown in Figure 2b.
3.2. Enhanced CHF by Fractal Surfaces. The CHF is
another important factor of boiling heat transfer. The wall
temperature will increase sharply once the input heat flux
exceeds the CHF and it will threaten the safe operation of
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thermal control devices.34 For flow boiling conditions, the heat
transfer situation varies along the heating surface due to the
directional liquid flow. The coalescence of bubbles generated
on the upstream forms huge vapor blankets and block the
liquid supply on the downstream of the heating surface, where
the heat transfer situation is the worst. In this way, the boiling
crisis is usually triggered first on the downstream of the heating
surface.33 One of the original intentions of designing the fractal
surface structure was to improve the liquid replenishment on
the downstream part of the heating surface by the hydrophilic
networks.
As shown in Figure 3, the fractal treelike hydrophilic
networks work as expected: the CHF increases with the
Figure 3. CHFs of different surfaces.
increase of fractal order. The surface F3 achieves almost the
same value as the surface homogeneously covered by the
micro-pin-finned structure, and the results of surface F4 are
even higher than the FULL surface by about 5% under all the
flow velocities, which is also up to 82.2% higher than the
smooth surface. Results of surface P5 with parallel striated
structure are also plotted for comparison whose values are
much lower than the high-ordered fractal surfaces. This result
illustrates that it is the rational design of the fractal hydrophilic
networks that leads to a higher CHF value with only half of the
extended surface area.
One of the reasons that lead to the increase of the CHF is
the timely liquid supply to the heating surface, as shown in
Figure 4. Bubble behaviors near the CHF for U = 0.25 m/s (a) surface F4 with q = 44.6 W/cm2, (b) P5 with q = 35.9 W/cm2, (c) FULL with q =
41.5 W/cm2, and (d,e) schematic of the trigger mechanism of the CHF.
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Figure 4a for experimental phenomenon on surface F4 near the
CHF. The fractal treelike hydrophilic networks play a good
role as the liquid transport channels, which facilitate the liquid
supply to the bottom of the vapor blanket at the downstream
of the heating surface, where it is the worst place for liquid
replenishment. Benefitting from the efficient transport capacity
of the fractal treelike networks, the liquid can not only be
delivered in the parallel direction with the fluid flow, but also
in the perpendicular direction to all the downstream part of the
heating surface. With the effective liquid delivery by the fractal
smooth paths, the capillary wicking effect of micro-pin-finned
structure on both sides can also be utilized to a greater extent.
The dry-out process is alleviated with the direct liquid supply
to the root of bubbles. For parallel striated surface as shown in
Figure 4b, the straight smooth paths fail to supply liquid in the
direction perpendicular to the liquid flow, so its improvement
effects on the CHF are limited. However, due to the longer
borderlines brought by the thinner smooth paths, the capillary
wicking is improved compared with the surface with broad
straight path such as the surface F0, so the CHF of P5 also gets
a slight improvement.
The boiling crisis is triggered once the density of nucleation
site exceeds a critical number and blocks the smooth paths as
the sketch map shows in Figure 4d. The relative superheat of
smooth path reduces with the increase of fractal order from F0
to F3, which decreases the nucleation site density, and further
leads to a higher CHF. For F4 surface, there is no bubble
generated on the smooth paths due to the low relative
superheat as discussed above. The vapor film cannot be formed
until the bubbles on neighboring structured parts are large
enough to contact with each other across the smooth paths.
Due to the absence of bubbles on the smooth paths, the
formation of vapor film needs a larger bubble dimension on the
structured surface, which can only be formed at a higher heat
flux.
Another reason for the improvement of CHF is the breaking
of vapor blanket. As shown in Figure 4c, for surfaces
homogeneously covered by micro-pin-finned structure, there
are huge vapor blankets formed which obstruct the liquid
supply from the top to the chip. As detailed and discussed in a
previous study, the vapor blankets are formed by the floating
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ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
Figure 5. Process of the boiling crisis (U = 0.25 m/s) for (a) τ = 0 ms, (b) τ = 110 ms, (c) τ = 178 ms, and (d) τ = 424 ms.
and combination of small bubbles and its length is determined
by the Helmholtz wavelength34
2πσ(ρv + ρl )
L B = λH =
ρv ρl (UB − US)2 (3)
where UB and US are the velocities of the vapor blanket and
liquid, respectively, at the bottom of the vapor blanket.
Under high heat fluxes, the liquid supply from the top is
blocked by vapor blankets, so the liquid can only be supplied
from the side, and the CHF can be calculated as34
qCHFL BDB = ρl (hfg + c plTsub)[Q wi + Q sl ]
(4)
where Qsl and Qwi are the liquid volume flow rate by the
sublayer and capillary wicking effect of the surface structure,
respectively, DB is the sublayer thickness, and Tsub is the
subcooling of the liquid. Both of these two effects contribute to
the flow boiling CHF on structured surfaces. For surface with
fractal hydrophilic networks as shown in Figure 4a, the
capillary effects of the surface structure is more fully utilized
due to the liquid delivery by the hydrophilic paths. On the
other hand, hydrophilic paths perpendicular to the liquid flow
direction break the continuous growth of vapor blankets. As
the length of vapor blankets is limited compared to the
homogeneous surface, the CHF can get a further improvement
according to the equation above. For the straight striped
surfaces, as a comparison, the smooth paths in parallel with the
flow direction are incompetent for breaking the vapor blankets,
as marked in Figure 4b and the schematic of Figure 4e. The
small bubbles formed on structured surface still coalesce into
vapor blankets as on the homogeneous surface, which is
harmful to the liquid supply.
To declare the effects of the fractal structure on the
occurrence of CHF, Figure 5 illustrates the phenomenon
during the process of the boiling crisis, with the development
of vapor film marked out. As shown in Figure 5a, the transition
from nucleate boiling to film boiling first happens on the high-
ordered fractal paths on the downstream of the heating surface.
As discussed by Zhou et al.17,18 for pool boiling on structured
surfaces with fractal patterns, the bubbles formed on
neighboring structured parts coalesce with each other under
high heat fluxes and cover the smooth paths. The fractal paths
lose the function of liquid replenishment and further lead to
the deterioration of heat transfer. It is difficult to reverse once
the process of transition to film boiling happens. As shown in
Figure 5b−d, once the high-ordered smooth paths are covered
by vapor film generated by neighboring structured surface, it
will expand gradually, and eventually the whole heating surface
is covered by the vapor film.
As discussed above, the hydrophilic smooth paths play a role
in breaking the vapor blanket formed on the structured
surfaces. To achieve a higher CHF value, the optimized design
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of the hydrophilic paths is essentially important. As indicated
by Kousalya et al.,10 who carried out experimental studies of
flow boiling on striped heterogeneous wetting surfaces, the
ideal width of hydrophilic channels should be optimized to
obtain isolated bubbles between hydrophobic parts without
combination across multiple channels. At the same time,
increasing the area fraction of the hydrophobic region to
increase the active nucleation site density is beneficial to
improve the heat transfer performance. For the current
heterogeneous structured surface, narrow hydrophilic paths
are expected to increase the structured surface area and forbid
the nucleation on smooth paths. However, on the other hand,
it should be wide enough to play a role in breaking the vapor
blankets formed on neighboring structured surfaces and liquid
delivery. Determining the minimal width of the smooth paths
such that each structured part behaves independently is
expected to result in the best possible configuration.
4. CONCLUSIONS
In this work, we designed a series of micro-pin-finned surfaces
with fractal treelike hydrophilic networks to facilitate the liquid
supply on the downstream part of the heating surface and
further improve the flow boiling heat transfer performance.
The fractal surfaces demonstrated a simultaneous enhance-
ment of both the HTC and CHF. Especially for the CHF
which was improved up to 82.2% compared to the smooth
surface, and even higher than the surface homogeneously
covered by surface structure with twice of the extended surface
area. The treelike fractal hydrophilic networks facilitate the
liquid supply to the bubble root on the downstream of the
heating surface where the heat transfer situation is the worst.
The breaking of vapor blanket and the improvement of
capillary wicking of the surface structure also contribute to the
increase of the CHF. It was observed that for heterogeneous
structured surfaces with narrow smooth strips, the bubble
nucleation of the smooth part can be restrained by neighboring
structured surfaces due to the higher energy barrier of the
smooth surface, which calls for a relative superheat for
nucleation. This work provides reference for the design of
heterogeneous surfaces with both smooth and structured parts
to increase the CHF to the maximum extent. The minimal
width of the smooth paths which segments structured parts to
behave independently is expected to be the best possible
configuration.
■
ASSOCIATED CONTENT
*
sı Supporting Information
The Supporting Information is available free of charge at
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.1c11250.
Details of fractal surface design; contact angle test;
experimental setup and procedure; data reduction and
https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.1c11250
ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2021, 13, 48189−48195
ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
uncertainty analysis; calculation method of heat loss;
repeatability and hysteresis test; boiling curves under
different flow velocities; and simulation of chip temper-
ature distribution (PDF)
Wettability test for the fractal surface F4 (MP4)
■
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Authors
Jiabin Fang − School of Chemical Engineering and Technology,
Xi’an Jiaotong University, 710049 Xi’an, China;
orcid.org/0000-0002-4853-8753; Email: jiabinfang@
mail.xjtu.edu.cn
Jinjia Wei − School of Chemical Engineering and Technology,
Xi’an Jiaotong University, 710049 Xi’an, China; State Key
Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an
Jiaotong University, 710049 Xi’an, China; orcid.org/
0000-0001-6373-7374; Email: jjwei@mail.xjtu.edu.cn
Authors
Bo Yuan − School of Chemical Engineering and Technology,
Xi’an Jiaotong University, 710049 Xi’an, China;
orcid.org/0000-0001-7418-5448
Lei Liu − School of Chemical Engineering and Technology,
Xi’an Jiaotong University, 710049 Xi’an, China;
orcid.org/0000-0002-0444-9089
Chenyi Cui − School of Chemical Engineering and Technology,
Xi’an Jiaotong University, 710049 Xi’an, China;
orcid.org/0000-0002-3470-8950
Yonghai Zhang − School of Chemical Engineering and
Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, 710049 Xi’an, China;
orcid.org/0000-0003-4793-0603
Complete contact information is available at:
https://pubs.acs.org/10.1021/acsami.1c11250
Author Contributions
B.Y. and J.W. conceived the idea. J.F. and J.W. did the
supervision. B.Y. and Y.Z. prepared the surfaces. B.Y. and L.L.
performed the experiments. C.C. did the contact angle and
wettability test. B.Y. performed the analysis and wrote the first
draft of the manuscript. All authors have given approval to the
final version of the manuscript.
Notes
The authors declare no competing financial interest.
■
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors acknowledge the financial support from the
National Natural Science Foundation of China (no.
51636006), ESA-CMSA Joint Boiling Project (TGMTYY00-
RW-05-1.00), second batch of scientific experiment proposals
aboard China Space Station (TGMTYY00-JY-53-1.00), Funds
of International Cooperation and Exchange of the National
Natural Science Foundation of China (Research collaboration
NSFC-VR) (no. 51961135102), and Shaanxi Creative Talents
Promotion Plan-Technological Innovation Team (2019TD-
039).
■
ABBREVIATIONS
BHTC, boiling heat transfer coefficient
CHF, critical heat flux
HTC, heat transfer coefficient
ONB, onset nucleate boiling
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ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2021, 13, 48189−48195