Effects of nanowire height on pool boiling performance of water on silicon chips

A new technique is developed to directly grow Cu nanowire (CuNW) on Si substrate with electrochemical deposition to produce height-controlled hydrophilic nanowired surfaces for enhancing pool boiling performance. For broader heat transfer applications, CuNW and Si nanowires (SiNW) with various nanowire heights were fabricated and examined under pool boiling with water. The heat transfer performance of the samples with NW arrays is enhanced with increasing NW heights regardless of the NW materials. The surface with the tallest NW structure (35 mu m-tall SiNW) yielded a heat flux of 134 W/cm(2) at 23 K wall superheat, about 300% higher than a plain Si surface at the same wall superheat. (C) 2011 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.