International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476

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International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhmt

Review

A state-of-the-art overview on the developing trend of heat transfer

enhancement by single-phase flow at micro scale
Sining Li a,c, Hongna Zhang a,b,c,⇑, Jianping Cheng a, Xiaobin Li b, Weihua Cai a,⇑, Zengyao Li d,
Fengchen Li b
a
School of Energy Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
b
Sino-French Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Zhuhai 519082, China
c
Key Laboratory of Efficient Utilization of Low and Medium Grade Energy (Tianjin University), Ministry of Education of China, Tianjin 300072, China
d
Key Laboratory of Thermo-Fluid Science and Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Continuous improvement of energy-efficient systems has led to various technical features such as minia-
Received 1 March 2019 turization, integration, and portability. This development became the leading trend of the contemporary
Received in revised form 6 July 2019 industry, with the evolvement of various new and miniaturized instruments such as micro-electro-
Accepted 22 July 2019
mechanical systems and micro-satellite. Highly miniaturized and integrated electronic devices often
Available online 8 August 2019
release a large amount of heat within their micro scale inter-components areas, which under certain cir-
cumstances, may lead to the micro-device’s functional failure. This calls for techno-scientific efforts for
Keywords:
efficient heat removal from the mentioned devices. Numerous innovatively scenarios have been so far
Heat transfer enhancement
Micro heat sink
explored to satisfy the greatly increasing heat removal demand. This paper explores two major types
Passive technic of heat removal technics for micro-scale single-phase flow, namely passive and active type. The passive
Active technic type includes the geometry modification and working media change, where corresponding effects on
heat transfer performance and fluid flow are addressed by Nusselt number and friction factor, respec-
tively. Their most important advantages are stability and robustness in operation or integration with
complex systems. For the active type, only the pulsating inlet flow and acoustic wave are considered
in the present paper, which are less reviewed recently. Generally, the heat transfer enhancement is attrib-
uted to the effect of disturbed thermal boundary layers on mixing of fluids. The present review article is
organized in a way that provides a historical perspective of the recent developments in this area, and
advances comprehensive comments from overall situations; which may serve a substantial guidance
for researchers in different background who intend to step into this area.
Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Important definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Development of passive techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1. Geometrical modification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1.1. Internal structure modification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1.2. Inlet/outlet and header design improvement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2. Working medium modification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.2.1. Nanofluids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.2.2. Non-Newtonian fluids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4. Active micro techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.1. Pulsating inlet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.2. Acoustic wave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

⇑ Corresponding authors at: Sino-French Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Zhuhai 519082, China (H. Zhang).
E-mail addresses: zhanghn26@mail.sysu.edu.cn (H. Zhang), caiwh@hit.edu.cn (W. Cai).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2019.118476
0017-9310/Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476

5. Conclusions. . . . . . . . . . . . ....... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Declaration of Competing Interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Acknowledgement . . . . . . ....... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
References . . . . . . . . . . . . ....... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Nomenclature

Ab area of the bottom surface, mm2 Wt width of transverse channel

Aw heat transfer area of channel, mm2 Wc center-to-center distance of Dh hydraulic diameter
cp specific heat capacity, J/kg
K microchannel
Dh hydrodynamic diameter, mm z z-coordinate (axial distance), mm
De Deborah number z* dimensionless axial distance (z⁄ = z/ReDhPr)
f Fanning friction factor Zth* dimensionless thermal entrance length (zth⁄=zth/
Fc field synergy number ReDhPr)
h heat transfer coefficient, W/(m
K)
H depth of channel, mm Greek symbols
H* height ratio q density, kg/m3
J Colburn j factor l dynamic viscosity, kg/(m
s)
l0 consistency coefficient [Pa
sn] k thermal conductivity, W/ (m
K)
kf thermal conductivity of fluid, W/(m
K) C the period of pulsating flow, s
kn thermal conductivity of nanofluids, W/(m
K) d dimple/protrusion depth (lm)
ks thermal conductivity of solid, W/(m
K) a channel aspect ratio
Lm length of main input/output channel h channel angle
Nu Nusselt number / Nanopartical volume fraction,%
n the number of microchannels x Nanopartical mass fraction, %
Pr Prandtl number
P pressure, kPa
Subscript
Q total heat load f fluid
4P pressure drop, kPa in inlet
q heat flux, W/m2 n power-law index
R thermal resistance,
max maximum
St Strouhal number min minimum
x, y, z three coordinates out outlet
TP thermal performance factor w wall surface
T temperature, K
fd fully developed flow
L length of microchannel heat sink s steady flow
u hydrodynamic diameter of velocity, m/s p pulsating flow
W width of channel, mm
Wi Weissenberg number

1. Introduction ‘‘economic driver” in the coming days [2]. The boom in micro-
electro-mechanical systems (MEMS, consisting of lab-on-a-chip
The problem of microelectronic devices cooling has become a devices) has objectively allowed the rapid development of space
hot international research topic since 1980s. In order to maintain technology to make satellites smaller in size and volume. The
the working temperature condition for different devices such as key problem associated to this technological advancement resides
portable electronic equipment used on a daily basis, micro-air- in the fact that highly miniaturized and integrated electronic
vehicles (MAV) and micro-satellite propulsion systems in national devices often produce exorbitant amounts of heat to an extent that
defense, researchers have been working on improving the heat the used conventional cooling methods are pushed to their limits
transfer ability. Taking a micro-satellite propulsion system as an for the required heat removal task at hand. Microfluidic systems
example, the power consumption per unit volume of a micro- are frequently encountered in these systems where cooling med-
satellite is larger than that of macro-satellite executing the same ium is confined within channels on a scale of micrometers. Therein,
mission, because the heat dissipation area is inversely proportional flows are usually indicated to be in a flow regime at low Reynolds
to the square of the device characteristic scale, which results in a number or laminar regime, i.e., flows receive much greater impact
high heat flux density in the microsystem of interest. The maxi- from the fluidic viscosity compared with that from inertia, and
mum heat flux in microsatellite may reach up to 107 W/m2, which have a very limited cooling performance. As a result, the develop-
is far higher than that due to friction in the surface of spacecraft ment of efficient heat transfer strategies in microfluidic systems
when it returns to earth. Therefore, it may cause hot spots and becomes a necessity. In addition to mechanical engineering appli-
excessively high working temperature in some components, which cations, heat transfer enhancement at micro scale recently also
leads to the decrease of the device’s operational reliability. It is found its importance in the area of medical and biochemical engi-
reported that the reliability drops by 5% for every 1 °C increase of neering. For instance, when blood oxygenators and bioreactors
working temperature when the device works in the temperature process very viscous liquids containing shear-sensitive biomateri-
range of 70–80 °C [1]. als such as animal cells and plant cells, it is necessary to use lam-
Against this backdrop, the miniaturization in electromechanical inar flow rather than relying on turbulence to obtain efficient
systems especially in the national defense is also known as the mixing and excellent heat transfer characteristics [3].
 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476
So far, in order to improve the functionality, the versatility, and
the performance of MEMS and national defense devices, research-
ers continue to integrate new physics into the microfluidic plat-
form. Via novel technics, it will be possible to design smaller,
lighter, more portable and efficient micro heat transfer devices.
Considerable progress has been made on microchannel-based heat
exchangers (or micro heat exchangers) [4–8] for their advantages
including: scaling-down benefits without compromising their
thermal performance, high heat transfer efficiency with lower
thermal resistance, low cost and inventory of coolants [9]. More-
over, when compared to conventional (i.e., macro-scale technolo-
gies) cooling systems, they have a much larger surface-to-volume
ratio which assures rapid heat exchange between the heat source
and the coolant and an excellent thermal homogeneity by avoiding
local hot spots [10]. The so-far developed micro heat exchangers
can be roughly categorized into three groups: passive, active and
compound technics, as schematically presented in Fig. 1 [11].
Passive technics for heat transfer enhancement rely on adjust-
ing geometric designs or fluidic properties to maximize the contact
area as well as to excite chaotic advection [12,13], whereas active
technics rely on introducing external perturbations to the fluids. In
passive techniques, chaotic advection in microfluidic systems is
often generated by delicately designed channel geometries or fab-
ricating obstacles in channel structures, such as inserts, surface
modification, surface extension and additives. Currently, passive
techniques for heat transfer enhancement have found their widest
use in aerospace, automobile, and cryogenic industries because of
their compactness and operational flexibility for desired thermal
performance. They are often stable and robust in operation or inte-
gration with complex systems, as they do not require external
actors for fluid delivery and additional external components and
energy. Limitations also arises in realistic applications with only
basic flow restriction such as long heat transfer length (larger than
few centimeters) which engenders unmixed regions and low effi-
ciency for highly viscous fluids. In addition, fabrication of such
micro heat exchangers is likely to experience higher risks of failure
from their complex channel configurations after introducing obsta-
cles. In this sense, active methods have the potential to overcome
these limitations by inducing external disturbance to the flow.
They can be categorized by respective external disturbance sources
such as temperature, pressure, electro-hydrodynamics (EHD), elec-
Fig. 1. Schematic of classification of enhancement technologies on microchannels.
3
trokinetics (EK), dielectrophoretics (DEP), acoustics and magneto-
hydrodynamics (MHD) [14]. However, the accompanying cost is
more associated to the incorporation of active control components,
where complex fabrication processes are required. Consequently,
the integration of active technics is both challenging and expensive
in a microfluidic system. In sum, though there are pros and cons for
both passive and active micro heat exchangers, passive technics
are stable robust in operation and can be easily integrated in a
more complex system, while active ones integrated with external
fields can reach more efficient heat transfer. Admittedly, in the
compound systems, the two or more the active or passive methods
may be used simultaneously to achieve better thermal perfor-
mance, which may be higher than either of the technics operating
solely.
Theoretically, for a single-phase flow, the heat transfer process
is realized through two possible modes via the conductive and con-
vective heat transfer. The conductive heat transfer is determined
by the contacted area between the heat source and the coolant,
as well as the conductivity of the coolant, which in turn means that
the heat transfer can be improved by enlarging the contacted area
and choosing a coolant with large conductivity. The convective
heat transfer on the other hand, is determined by the flow rate
and the flow regime, as well as the chaotic advection (also called
Lagrangian turbulence) for which the involvement of flow stretch-
ing, folding and breaking phenomena is helpful to achieve the tar-
geted efficient heat transfer. With this in mind, whether of passive
or active type, an efficient micro heat exchanger is often designed
to promote either conductive or convective heat transfer, or even
both. Moreover, it is equally important that the achieved heat
transfer performance provides thermal homogeneity to avoid local
hot spots and save energy for assembling micro heat exchangers.
Most of recent reviews on the subject matter have focused on
passive methods, including swirl flow devices [11], corrugation
geometry [15–17] and working media [18]. To the author’s best
knowledge, the so far comprehensive review [14] has tried to cat-
egorize the active and passive methods and reviewed various heat
transfer technics applied in heat exchangers, but letting alone a
number of other commonly used technics; which are therefore
part of the present article’s content. To draw a general picture,
the superior sides of this review study compared to the other
review studies can be summarized in the following aspects.
4 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476
First, we exhaustively review the heat transfer enhancement
methods used generally in microfluidic applications with low Re
number, including passive and active methods. Second, among
the passive methods, the evaluation of Non-Newtonian fluids such
as the pseudo-plastic and viscoelastic fluids constitutes a promis-
ing topic for futuristic biology and medical studies. Therefore, eval-
uating the usage of the fluids in heat transfer enhancement
methods constitutes another important subject put forward in
the present literature. In addition, the evaluation of the mal-
distribution effect on heat transfer is also less considered in
microchannel heat sink (MCHS). HTE occurs at better flow distribu-
tion if the manifold inlet/outlet arrangement and header design are
reasonable. It is therefore of a crucial importance to summarize
and highlight the importance of such studies. In the article, the
mechanism of each methods and associated interpretation are
given, where an in-depth review of related studies is also carried
out, and recommendations for further studies are proposed.
Finally, turning the focus specifically to active methods, this review
discussed the pulsating inlet flow and acoustic wave. For the pul-
sating inlet flow, it is given for fluid to disturb/break thermal
boundary layer through flow instability in laminar flow, whereas
there is rarely review illuminate this technics. For acoustic wave,
the effect on thermal performance hasn’t still been clarified. Thus,
the highlight of the need to study and physical meaning of these
mechanisms is quite important.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2,
we review some important definitions as evaluating the heat trans-
fer behavior in microchannel. In Sections 3 and 4, we provide a his-
torical perspective followed by the state-of-the-art developments
in the two major types of heat transfer enhancement in microscale:
passive and active techniques. The passive techniques is usually
carried out by modifying the geometry of microchannel or working
medium as present in Section 3, whereas the active ones is realized
by imposing pulsating inlet condition or acoustic wave as dis-
cussed in Section 4. For each type, the category of enhancement
technologies in microchannels is first presented and followed by
the discussion of the corresponding operational conditions. Finally,
we summarize and conclude our paper in Section 5.
2. Important definitions
In this section, some important terms usually used to evaluate
the flow regime and heat transfer performance are firstly listed,
including the heat transfer coefficient h, the Nussult number Nu,
and the thermal performance factor (TP), etc. Generally, the most
performance evaluations in the cooling of microelectronic device
are high heat transfer efficiency, low pressure drop penalty and
temperature homogeneity. Therefore, these evaluations are needed
to be considered altogether to design and present in Section 2.
The friction factor f [11] is a measurement of energy consump-
tion in fluid flow, an index of the magnitude of pumping power. For
the tube flow, f can be calculated from:
DP
f ¼
ðqu2 =2ÞðL=Dh Þ
where DP is the pressure drop across the test section, q is the fluid
density, Dh the characteristic length (usually hydraulic diameter), u
the characteristic flow velocity, and L is the length of the
microchannel.
As a measure of the convective heat transfer occurring at the
surface, the average Nussult number Nu of the microchannels is
calculated by [19]:
Nu ¼ hm Dh =k
hm ¼ Q =½nAw ðT w  T m Þ
Q ¼ q  Ab ð4Þ
where hm is the average heat transfer coefficient; Q is the total heat
load generated by the chip; n is the number of microchannels; q is
the heat flux; Ab and Aw represent the area of the bottom surface
and the heat transfer area of per channel, respectively and are dif-
ferent for various types of channels; Tw is the average temperature
on the wall surface; Tm = (Tin + Tout)/2 is the average temperature of
the coolant with Tin and Tout representing the inlet fluid temperature
and outlet fluid temperature, respectively.
To evaluate and compare the overall thermal performance of
the heat sinks, the thermal resistance R is defined [20] as:
T max  T in
R¼ ð5Þ
Q
where Tmax is the value of maximum temperature on the heated
substrate.
In a more general way, TP is used to evaluate the performance of
strategies such as fin, rib and coil. It is defined as the Nu ratios over
f ratios to the power of one third [21], which can be written as:
Nu=Nu0
TP ¼ ð6Þ
ðf =f 0 Þ
1=3
Micro heat exchangers with better thermal performance are
generally associated with higher pressure drops or introduction
of additional pumping power. Therefore, the actual design of the
heat exchanger is basically concerned with selecting an optimized
solution which is an optimal balance between gain in heat transfer
and pressure drop penalty. TP of an insert device is better if this
device can achieve significant lift up in the heat transfer coefficient
with minimum increase of friction factor.
The Colburn j factor [22] which describes the heat transfer per-
formance of oscillating flow is defined as:
Nu
j ¼ St
Pr2=3 ¼ ð7Þ
Pr1=3
Re
where the Strouhal number (St) is a dimensionless number that is
used to describe oscillating flow mechanisms. The Colburn j factor
describes the convective heat transfer intensity and is proportional
to St. The larger j is, the stronger the intensity of convective heat
transfer becomes; The Prandtl number (Pr) is defined as the ratio
of momentum diffusivity to thermal diffusivity (Pr ¼ cp l=k); The
Reynolds number (Re) is a dimensionless number used to quantify
the relative importance of inertial and viscous forces within a fluid
flow and accounts for characteristics of both the fluid and the envi-
ronment in which the fluid is manipulated (Re ¼ quD
l ).
h
The Fc [23–25] which stands for the dimensionless can be
described for quantifying the field synergy between the velocity
and temperature fields.
Z 1
 Nux
Fc ¼ ðU
rTÞd y ¼ ð8Þ
Rex Pr
ð1Þ 0
where the larger the field synergy number Fc, the better the synergy
between the velocity and the temperature fields is. The Fc can pro-
vide other ways to evaluate overall heat transfer performance.
In addition, thermal homogeneity is crucial for the actual design
of the micro heat exchanger. It can be described by DT [26–28],
which is defined as:
DT ¼ T max  T min ð9Þ
ð2Þ where DT reflects the homogeneity of temperature distribution of
the microchannel heat sink; Tmin is the value of minimum temper-
ð3Þ ature on the heated substrate.
 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476
3. Development of passive techniques
As aforementioned, adjusting geometric structures and chang-
ing coolants are often used to enhance heat transfer in passive
techniques as summarized in Fig. 1. They aim at exciting the chao-
tic advection in the microchannel, maximizing the contacted area
between the hot and cold fluids, increasing the conductivity of
coolant, and so forth, to promote conductive and convective heat
transfer. This section overviews the passive heat transfer enhance-
ment techniques from each way as follows.
3.1. Geometrical modification
Flow manipulation through modifying geometrical structures
has been proven to be very effective for the development of effi-
cient heat transfer enhancement in microscale. Before illustrating
the results in complex microchannels, the simplest model (e.g.,
straight rectangular, circular and trapezoidal channels) is firstly
set out as a reference. A set of equations that can be used to predict
heat transfer performance in a straight microchannel have been
reviewed previously [11]. Therein, the fluid mixing and the heat
transfer are usually poor. Lee et al. [19,29] conducted a series of
investigations on the thermal behavior of single-phase thermally
developing flow passing through rectangular microchannels of dif-
ferent aspect ratio. They demonstrated that the traditional Navier–
Stokes (N-S) equations can be used to simulate flow and heat
transfer in microchannels, and pointed out that thermal perfor-
mance is significantly affected by both the flow developing length
(x* = L/DhRePr) and the aspect ratio. The heat transfer efficiency
deteriorates as the flow develops especially at the square corners.
The boundary layer thickening as the flow becomes regular [30] is
blamed for the experienced poor thermal performance, which
implies that redeveloping the thermal boundary layer could effec-
tively improve heat transfer performance. They also established a
general correlation to address the aspect ratio effect for a laminar
developing flow in rectangular microchannels based on numerical
results. Table 1 lists some widely-used correlations to predict heat
transfer performance for laminar flows in channels of different
cross section shapes [29,31–35]. These conventional correlations
have been widely used in the literature to compare the results of
microchannel experiments such as in Xie et al. [20,36–39]. The per-
sisting lacunae of the straight microchannel have been pointed out.
Facing the challenge of the increasing intensity and the heat load in
the micro heat exchange systems, the cooling systems with
Table 1
Summary of conventional correlations for the prediction of microchannel heat transfer in laminar flow.
Reference Year Configuration
Kays and Crawford [31] 1980 Rectangular
Peng and Peterson [32] 1996 Rectangular
Lee and Garimella [29] 2006 Rectangular
Incropera and DeWitt [33] 1996 Circular
Nguyen et al [34] 1996 Trapezoid
Wu and Cheng [35] 2003 Trapezoid
5
straight MCHS was unable to meet the requirements. Therefore a
significant amount of innovative microchannel geometries with
complex structural designs have been developed. Roughly speak-
ing, the existing geometrical modifications follow two ways,
namely inserting internal structures and improving inlet/outlet
and header designs. Inserting internal structures is one of the com-
monly used ways to extend the contacting surface area, to destabi-
lize/restart the boundary layer formation, to create secondary flow
and/or to generate unsteady flow motions, thereby enhancing the
micro-scale heat transfer efficiency.
To the author’s best knowledge, heat exchanges thermal perfor-
mance, no matter the attainable overall efficiency or the involved
thermal homogeneity, is fundamentally a result of the implicated
flow motion characteristics. Likewise, better flow distribution is
of a crucial importance to achieve efficient heat transfer. Flow
mal-distribution is un-wanted and disadvantageous for the heat
transfer, which leads to the local over-heating and failure of the
devices. The so-far conducted researches of inserting internal
structures mainly considered the fluid flow behavior and associ-
ated heat transfer characteristics throughout the micro heat
exchanger or the overall heat transfer of complex micro-channel
heat sinks. However, there is still not much detailed studies on
the understanding of the complex flow features causing the flow
mal-distribution. In a general sense, the flow mal-distribution
can be induced by many factors; inlet/outlet header design, size
variations between the channels, hydraulic diameter, poor mani-
fold design, channel configurations, and changes in the fluid viscos-
ity, among others. [40,41]. Moreover, heat exchangers of MCHS,
consisting of multiple channels or manifolds where the working
fluid is, distributed often have a problem of flow mal-
distribution, which is caused by improper inlet/outlet locations
and header design (shape and size). The shape of manifolds, as well
as the length and location of inlet / outlet determine the flow uni-
formity or the heat transfer homogeneity among the channels. In
the following section, this paper overviews the efforts done to
improve thermal performance from the viewpoints of internal
structure modification and header design improvement.
3.1.1. Internal structure modification
High heat transfer efficiency is often accompanied with high
flow resistance. In other words, the usage of the augmentation
techniques improves the heat transfer at the cost of lifting pressure
drop. Recently, a variety of technologies have been developed to
reach as high heat transfer rate possible while taking care of the
Correlation Uncertainty (Nu)
Nufd ¼ 8:235ð1  1:883=a þ 3:767=a2  5:814=a3 ____
þ5:361=a4  2=a5 Þ
Nu ¼ 0:1165ðDh =W c Þ0:81 ðH=WÞ0:79 Re0:62 Pr1=3 16%
Nuz ¼ 1
 C2
þ C 4 for 1 6 a 6 10; z < zth 6–17%
C 1 ðz Þ þC 3
3 3 2
where C 1 ¼ 3:122  10 a þ 2:435  10 2
a C ¼ 6:412  101 ,
þ2:143  101 a þ 7:325
2
4 2
C 3 ¼ 1:589  10 a  2:603  10 a þ 2:444  102 ,
3
C 4 ¼ 7:148  1:328  101 =a þ 1:515  101 =a2  5:936=a3
Nu ¼ 1:86ðRePrD=LÞ1=3 ðl f Þ
l 0:14 ____
w
Nu ¼ 8:39Re0:5  1:33Re2=3 ____
For 10 < Re < 100 7.82%
Nu ¼ C 1 Re0:946 Pr0:488 ð1  c=aÞ3:547 ðe=Dh Þ0:041
c3:577 ðDh =LÞ1:369
For 100 < Re < 1500
Nu ¼ C 2 Re0:148 Pr0:163 ð1  c=aÞ0:908 ðe=Dh Þ0:033
c1:001 ðDh =LÞ0:798
6 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476
augmenting pumping power. Researches have been conducted for
different internal structures including reentrant cavities [30,42–
45], fins [46,47], ribs [48–53], rough surfaces, extended surfaces
[54–58], corrugations [59,60] and additives (reagents) [61–63].
The introduction of reentrant cavities consists of inducing the
flow vortices, thus interrupting the thermal boundary layer from
developing along the channel. Xia et al. [30,42–45] numerically
investigated the flow and the heat transfer in a series of
microchannels with differently-shaped reentrant cavities (see
Fig. 2) including triangular, aligned fan-shaped and offset fan-
shaped reentrant cavities. Their analysis on the effects of geometric
parameters on fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics helped
them identifying an optimal re-entrant shape for MCHSs. In
regards to the mechanism responsible for better thermal perfor-
mance attainment, the introduction of reentrant cavities was not
only found to bring about the vortices inside the reentrant cavities
but also periodically redeveloped thermal boundary layer along
the constant cross-section surface [30], the jet and throttling
effects and the increased heat transfer surface area [42]. However,
the compound augmentation for reentrant cavities could increase
the pressure drop. In addition, the slipping over the reentrant cav-
ities could seriously reduce conduction and viscosity to suppress
heat transfer. Pan et al. [64] motivated by the above facts, con-
ducted the in-depth experimental investigation on MCHSs with
fan-shaped cavities (FSCs). They designed and optimized this struc-
ture on the heat transfer performance in other aspects, such as
deviation degree, coincidence degree, and distribution of FSCs.
Therefore, through the above presented investigations, it is obvious
that reentrant cavities introducing technic is quite popular and can
achieve a quite high performance in terms of heat transfer
enhancement.
Besides reentrant cavities, inserting fin cores is another alterna-
tive to enlarge the effective surface area, which is made up of lou-
vered fin, strip fins [65], pin-fins [66] and wavy or corrugated,
among others. Manglik et al. [67] provided a detailed investigation
of the forced low-Re air flow in wavy plate-fin channels. They con-
cluded that on the fin surface the thermal boundary layers are peri-
odically interrupted, forming recirculation zones where high local
heat transfer is achieved. Moreover, it is not always wise to
increase fin density, as it tends to confine and dampen the recircu-
lation due to the smaller inter-fin flow space. Foong et al. [68] con-
centrated on a square microchannel with four longitudinal internal
fins. They noticed that unlike that in an un-finned channel where
the region of maximum fluid velocity is always located at the cen-
ter of the channel, the region of maximum velocity can shift to the
corner after adding internal fins. This is beneficial to the heat trans-
fer performance in the micro-channel due to the following two sce-
narios: steeper velocity gradient at on the heated surface, and the
extension in on the surface area for heat transfer which shortens
the length required for the development of the thermal boundary
layer. After analyzing the flow pattern and associated heat transfer
performance they found an optimal fin height ratio for a square
microchannel which was around 0.67. For fin height above the
optimal height, the flow pattern was not favorable due to the stag-
nation of the fluid in the center of the channel. Some studies have
been indicated that strip-fins [69,70] and pin-fins [71,72] can
decrease the pressure drop and enhance thermal homogeneity
compared to the parallel micro heat exchanger. Compared with
plate-fin heat sinks which have own advantages of simple struc-
ture, pin-fin heat sinks are unique in that they can impede the
development of thermal boundary layer at the cost of an increased
pressure drop [73]. To further achieve better thermal performance,
many researches focus on optimizing the arrangements and shapes
of fins in view of achieving higher thermal performance while
keeping the rise in pressure drop under reasonable limits. For
example, most investigators divided the arrangement of pin fins
into two parts: inline arrangement and staggered arrangement
(seen in Fig. 3). They [74,75] concluded that the inline arrangement
has a lower frictional loss, while the staggered arrangement has a
lower thermal resistance. Due to a key consideration of heat
removal capacity in MCHS, the staggered arrangement is usually
adopted in MCHS. For optimal shapes of pin-fin, various shapes
of cross-sections (square, circular, elliptic, diamond, triangle and
hexagon) were investigated. Pandit et al. [76] showed that the dia-
mond pin fins have the better thermal performance in comparison
with circular, triangular, and hexagonal shapes. Kapur et al. [77]
carried out a study on the effect of square, circular and elliptic per-
forations on pinned heat sink. The results showed that elliptical
perforations have the minimum pressure drop while circular per-
forations show the best thermal performance. The same conclusion
that the shape of ellipse pin-fin has the smallest pressure drop also
was obtained by Tullius et al. [78] and Yang et al. [79]. On a global
scale, it was found that fin cores, owing to their simple micro struc-
ture, can be easily implemented in electronic devices cooling. Tak-
ing from the above presented details, more future researches are
still needed, now focusing on a systematic investigation with
detailed experimental verification about the influence of pin-fin
shape on a trade-off between heat removal capacity and pressure
drop for practical design.
Besides fins, the offset ribs [80] are also considered and often
installed on the sidewalls of two opposite channel for MCHSs with
the following two purposes: to develop the converging–diverging
microchannels (special wavy microchannels) as manifested by
Ghaedamini et al. [62]; and to work as baffles as manifested by
Promvonge et al. [81–84] and Sriromreun et al. [58]. Chai et al.
[80] designed five different-shaped offset ribs (see Fig. 4). Their
numerical results showed that the offset ribs can lead to significant
heat transfer enhancement at the cost of high pressure drop
because of the interruption of boundary layer formation, and the
establishment of secondary flows. The thermal performance evalu-
ation criteria (TP) are about 1.02–1.48 for the different offset ribs
studied in Chai et al. [80]. When the mainstream flow passes
through the offset ribs, the offset ribs deflect the upstream flow
and engender the recirculating motions in their downstream
zones. As a result, the thermal boundary layer is attenuated [82],
and the temperature of the newly proposed MCHSs with offset ribs
is much lower and more uniformly distributed than that in the
smooth ones. Promvonge et al. [81] numerically studied the char-
acteristics of the flow and the heat transfer in a square channel
with 45-angled baffles (see Fig. 5). They found that the use of baf-
fles completely changes the distribution of the flow field and the
local heat transfer coefficient. The baffles can not only induce the
mainstream separation, but also secondary flows through the
channel if the baffles mounted on an inclination angle with the
axial direction. Therefore, when the cold or hot fluid is supplied
into the channels mounted with several ribs/baffles, its cooling or
heating efficiency can be greatly raised. It is worth noting that
ribs/baffles arrangement can decrease the flow area, which in turn
increases the pressure drop of fluid flow in a micro heat exchanger.
However, the angle, the height and the arrangement of rib/baffles
still need to be considered and optimized in practical design.
With the evolvement of the MCHS structures optimization,
researchers also recognized the ability of the bifurcation flow,
which splits the main flow into multiple downstream flow paths,
to enhance heat transfer. Table 2 summarizes the recent works of
MCHSs with bifurcation flows including the features of their
microchannels and the corresponding mechanisms for HTE effect.
The introduction of bifurcation disrupts the development of the
boundary layer, and then directs the flow to multiple flow paths
where individual boundary layers resume the bifurcated position
[36,100]. Xie et al. [20,36,37] designed a series of microchannels
subject to bifurcation, and their results suggested that the
 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476 7

(i) (ii)
D
D

E E

(iii)

Fig. 2. Heat transfer enhancement at micro scale by introducing triangular reentrant cavities. The microchannel with (i) triangular reentrant cavities [30]; (ii) aligned fan-
shaped reentrant cavities [42]: (a) computational domain and (b) channel geometric; (iii) Streamlines, pressure and temperature distribution for the structure of
microchannel with (a) straight, (b) triangular reentrant cavities and (c) aligned fan-shaped reentrant cavities along the plane of half the working fluid height.
8 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476
(a) Pin fin heat sink with inline
arrangement
(c) Photographic view of pin fin heat sink
with inline arrangement
Fig. 3. Schematic of the arrangement of pin fins: (a) inline arrangement and (b) staggered arrangement; experiment of the arrangement of pin fins: (c) inline arrangement
and (d) staggered arrangement [75].
microchannel of multistage bifurcation had better thermal perfor-
mance compared with rectangular microchannels. In recent years,
the structure of the living organism provide the inspiration to elec-
tronic chips, so we also see an increasing effort to achieve better
designs of bifurcation that look more natural [101,102]. Currently,
Y-shaped [20,85,88,103] and fractal tree-like bifurcation
[101,93,94] with multistage bifurcations see promising choices
for the design of MCHSs to achieve the required cooling perfor-
mance. MCHSs with Y-shaped bifurcation can enhance heat trans-
fer on account of providing larger area of the heat removal surface.
Likewise, the fractal network branching augment heat transfer,
resulting from increasing number of channels with smaller diame-
ter and the total cross-sectional flow area [93]. In industrial appli-
cations, the multiple Y-shaped bifurcations can replace T-shaped
bifurcations at the given number and angle to realize more effi-
ciency micro heat exchanger.
In sum, heat transfer enhancement has been obtained for those
structures. However, for each type of internal structure, it is a
necessity to consider how the shape, the dimension as well as
the density affect the heat transfer to find an optimal design. The
flow behavior is of course important to understand the above
effects. Moreover, it is also difficult to claim which one is the opti-
mal as the existing studies are usually focused on a single type of
structure. A comprehensive investigation and comparison among
using different types of internal structures will be very important
and helpful for the industrial application.
3.1.2. Inlet/outlet and header design improvement
Temperature uniformity is one of the primary features leading
to a better micro heat exchanger performance. On the contrary,
heat stress and heat strain could be induced by temperature mal-
distribution in the MCHS, which leads to the reduction of reliability
and failure of the MCHS. Therefore, temperature uniformity is an
(b) Pin fin heat sink with staggered
arrangement
(d) Photographic view of pin fin heat sink
with staggered arrangement
important factor to be improved in the MCHS designs. Tempera-
ture uniformity is required to get uniform flow distribution which
can be achieved through the realization of larger width ratio and
the smaller area ratio. However, flow mal-distribution tends to
occur more at inlet/outlet and header. In MCHS, the manifold
region is responsible for the allocation and convergence of fluid
when it flows from inlet to outlet. The manifold region maintains
the flow distribution between channels. Thus, the manifold design
plays an important role on the flow distribution in MCHS [117].
Various types of manifold inlet/outlet flow arrangement and
header design (including manifold shape and size) have been
investigated by the various researchers. Table 3 summarized the
existing studies regarding the modifications of manifold zone such
as the manipulation of inlet/outlet flow arrangements, shapes, as
well as respective effects on the MCHS thermal performance.
Datta et al. [118,119] have concluded that the smaller the area
ratio of the manifold is, the better the flow distribution. Kim et al.
[120] revealed that triangular header produces better flow distri-
bution as compared to rectangular and trapezoidal header.
Kumaran et al. [121] performed a more detailed study by consider-
ing the effects of several header design and inlet/outlet configura-
tions on flow mal-distribution in a MCHS. They numerically
evaluated different configurations through varying the header
shape, the header size and the locations of inlet and outlet as illus-
trated in Fig. 6. Their header shape analysis showed that a triangu-
lar inlet header provides better flow distribution. On the other
hand, the trapezoidal outlet header provides more uniform flow
distribution. Regarding the inlet and outlet arrangements, study
results showed that flow distribution is better for C-type flow con-
figurations and poor for V-type ones. HTE effects occurring in their
MCHSs were ascribed to the flow mal-distribution between the
channels which induces flow separation and recirculation bubbles
occurring in the inlet header. Similar to Kumaran et al. [121], Xia
 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476 9

(i) (ii)

(iii) (iv)

Fig. 4. Heat transfer enhancement at micro scale by introducing offset ribs. (i) Schematic of the microchannel with offset ribs on sidewalls in [80]; (ii) five different structures
of offset ribs (unit: mm); (iii) streamlines in the five different microchannels with offset ribs at Re = 508. (a) in the x-y plane (z = 0.25 mm), (b) in the y-z plane (x = 5.3 mm);
(iv) temperature distributions in those microchannels (Re = 508, z = 0.25 mm).

et al. [27] also took different configurations into consideration, but
focusing on the mechanism of how different inlet/outlet locations,
header shapes and microchannel cross-section shapes affect the
fluid flow behavior and heat transfer performance inside MCHSs
as illustrated in Fig. 7. They characterized the fluid flow by the
interaction of the branching flows and the friction provided by
the header wall, and concluded that the flow distribution is poor
for Z-type and better for I-type which has a symmetrical flow dis-
tribution. As for their hear shape effect, the rectangular header
shape offers more uniform flow distribution compared with sym-
metrical trapezoidal triangular headers. However, unlike header
shape effect, MCHSs with offset fan-shaped and triangular reen-
trant cavities exhibited a stronger effect on the heat transfer inten-
sification compared with the conventional rectangular
microchannel. For this design, the jetting and throttling effect,
the secondary flow from the triangular reentrant cavities, the addi-
tional perturbations near those reentrant cavities and the addi-
tional drag generated by those reentrant cavities interrupt and
redevelop the laminar flow boundary layer, thus enhancing the
heat transfer in this MCHS. On the basis of the whole study, it is
found that triangular inlet header can acquire uniform flow distri-
bution. Therefore, they are proven to be a better choice. More
importantly, the inlet/outlet location, header configuration and
microchannel shape should simultaneously be optimized to gain
higher heat transfer efficiency in practical application.
In addition to the above, some researchers reduced flow mal-
distribution by the structure optimization of manifold microchan-
nel (MMC) [122–124]. The manifold arrangement used to dis-
tribute the flow through alternating multiple inlets and outlets
greatly reduces the pressure drop due to its short length flow in
10 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476

(i)

(ii) a (iii) a

b b

Fig. 5. Heat transfer enhancement at micro scale by introducing baffles: (i) geometric parameters and computational domain of periodic flow [81]: (a) inline and (b)
staggered; (ii) temperature contours for 45° inline baffles; (iii) temperature contours for 90° inline baffles in (a) streamwise and (b) transverse planes, at Re = 800 and BR = 0.2.

channel, while simultaneously intensifying thermal performance
by interrupting thermal boundary layers. Sarangi et al. [123]
showed that the best heat transfer performance of MMC heat sink
could be acquired with 3:1 as the manifold inlet to outlet length.
Tang et al [125] employed tapered inlet plenum and inlet mani-
folds in the optimized self-similarity heat sink (SSHS, see Fig. 8).
They compared the thermal performance of a SSHS and an opti-
mized one based on numerical simulation. They found that the
height of overflow channel determines the flow distribution and
heat transfer performance, instead of width and length. The rectan-
gular inlet plenum and inlet manifold channel were optimized to
tapered ones which led to flow mal-distribution mitigation inside
the convectional SSHS (seen in Fig. 8 (ii)). The optimized SSHS
can provide the uniformity in temperature distribution and avoid
the hot spot to damage the microchannel, while the new
microstructure can increase the flow resistance. Park et al. [126]
proposed a correlation to guide the design of the microchannel
devices which uses manifold configuration with the rectangular
microchannel array and single-phase fully-developed laminar flow
to get uniform flow distribution, as
Nu=ðRe0:62 Pr0:33 Þ ¼ 0:015Br 0:22 ð10Þ
where Br is Brinkman number, a dimensionless parameter
(Br ¼ lV 2 =kDT) describing the relationship between viscous dissi-
pation and heat transfer.
 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476 11

Table 2
Summary of the recent investigations on HTE of MCHS by bifurcation flow. The working medium for all the cases is water.

Authors Year Configuration Conditions Remark

Lorenzini et al. [85]
Lorenzini et al. [86]
Lorenzini and Moretii [87]
Li et al. [88]
Xie et al. [20]
Rubio-Jimenez et al. [89]
Yan et al. [90]
Chen and Cheng [91]
Senn and Poulikakos [92]
Wang et al. [93]
Ghaedamini et al. [94]
Cao et al. [95]
Peng et al. [96]
Zhang et al. [97]
Zhang et al. [98]
Shen et al. [99]
2011 Y-shape H/L = 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, and 5.0 Thermal resistances of the optimized Y-shaped
cavities obtained for H/L = 1.0, 2.0, and 5.0 were,
respectively 66.61%, 55.37%, and 19.05% lower than
the optimal T-shaped cavities.
2014 Y-shape cavities 0.5  H/L  10.0 The Y-shaped cavity has more uniform internal heat
generation.
2007 Y-shaped and T-shaped The angle a between the two arms of the The decrease of a has remarkable beneficial effect on
fins Y-shaped bifurcation range from 80° to heat transfer.
190°.
2014 Constructed vertical Y- 200  Re  500, the angle between the The increase in heat transfer area is mainly
   
shaped bifurcation plates two arms (60 ,90 ,120 ,180 ) responsible for the heat transfer enhancement.
2015 Internal Y-shaped 200  Re  700, the angle between the The best thermal performance for MCHS is found at
bifurcation two arms of the bifurcation flow the longest internal Y-shaped bifurcation and a larger
    
(60 ,90 ,120 , 150 , 180 ) arm angle.
2016 w-shaped and Y-shaped Number of bifurcation is 2 or 3, (i) W-shaped configurations resulted in better
configurations hydraulic diameter Dh (lm) of 100, 126, heat transfer features compared with Y-
159, 200 shaped structure
(ii) Better thermal performance was mainly due
to the larger area of the heat removal surface.
2019 Bionic Y-shaped fractal Four branching levels, the number of A multi-objective optimal model which
network fractals ranges from 3 to 18. simultaneously optimizes the thermal resistance and
pumping power requires less pumping powers and
energy consumption.
2002 Fractal tree-like Fractal dimension of channel length Compared to traditional serpentine design, the tree-
microchannel nets distribution ranges from 1.0 to 2.0 shaped MCHSs have more promising characteristics,
such as pressure drop and temperature uniformity.
2004 Tree-like microchannel Re ¼ 20and Re ¼ 200; Pr = 2.39 Secondary flow can be induced at bifurcations to
nets cause the laminar mixing and improve local Nu.
2006 Tree-like microchannel 111.3  Re  1336, bifurcation angle (i) Tree-shaped microchannels have more uni-
 
nets (90 ,180 ) form temperature distribution and reduce
risk of microchannel clogging.
(ii) Increasing the number of channel nets and
levels can further decrease the maximum
temperature.
2011 Tree-shaped Re = 20, 200, 700, bifurcation angle At low Re, tree-shaped microchannels can achieve
 
microchannels range from 30 to180 more uniform flow and thermal distribution.
2018 Tree-shaped uin = 0.001, 0.05, 0.1 m/s, the angle (i) The bifurcation angle is 90°, where the worst
microchannels between the bifurcation thermal performance and the largest pressure
     
(15 ,30 ,45 ,60 ,75 ,90 ) drop simultaneously appear.
(ii) The inlet velocity also effects on the flow dis-
tribution uniformity.
2019 Tree-like branching Nu = 3.6, Pr = 4.3; the number of The tree-like branching microchannel with a smaller
networks branches levels ranges from 2 to 6. channel height, length ratio and width ratio has a
better thermal performance.
2013 Fractal-like microchannel a = 1, 0.5, and 0.333; H = 125lm, the The fractal-like microchannel with a higher branching
branches levels are one or two. level has a higher pressure drop and a larger heat
transfer performance due to the generation of
bifurcations and bends.
2015 Fractal-like microchannel a = 1, 0.5, and 0.333; H = 125lm The fractal-like microchannel with a smaller aspect
ratio has lower pressure drop and better thermal
performance because transverse vortices generated
become dominant and the boundary layers become
thicker.
2018 Internally vertical The distance between the tail end of (i) The optimal position of internal vertical bifur-
bifurcations internal bifurcation and the outlet of cation with a MCHS can enhance heat transfer
microchannel range from 0  L  5 mm performance without pressure drop penalty.
(ii) The positions of internal vertical bifurcation
have obviously variations of thermal
performance.

To sum up, V-type inlet configuration has a better heat transfer
performance, while Z-type has lower heat transfer efficiency. Tri-
angular inlet header can reduce flow mal-distribution. Moreover,
for the channel flow configurations, P-type has the lower friction
factor and I-type has the lower flow mal-distribution. Table 3 can
provide a guideline for designing manifold inlet/outlet and header
in practical application. In summary, increasing manifold length
and lateral distance between manifold inlet/outlet results in a
lower flow mal-distribution due to the decrease in flow resistance,
whereas increasing manifold width causes a higher flow mal-
distribution due to the increase of pressure drop. Moreover, to
date, there are few studies to reasonably explain the flow mal-
distribution effects at inlet/outlet and the header; let alone the
complex microstructures caused by the flow mal-distribution.
The existing literature about the description of the role of
geometry modification on the microchannel heat transfer process
is quite big. In this section, an effort has been made to report sys-
tematic studies providing a sufficient body of knowledge in terms
of various generated flow microstructures and associated heat
transfer mechanisms responsible for the targeted heat transfer
12 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476

Table 3
Summary of the recent important investigations on manifold inlet/outlet flow arrangements and manifold shape to get a better flow distribution in laminar flow.

Authors Year Working Configuration Conditions Remark

fluid
Lu and Wang 2006 water Parallel-channel cold plates and five inlet 100  Re  500, (i) Impingement configurations give the best
[104] configuration (namely I-, Z-,]-, L-, U-) 0.2  Vin  2.0 thermal performance for the investigated
configurations.
(ii) Z-arrangement configuration shows the worst
thermal performance due to flow recirculation
and mal-distribution.
Balaji et al. [105] 2006 water two inlets and four outlets 1.58  v  2.302 The design can distribute the pressure drop evenly
throughout the system and is a robust design.
Mishan et al. 2007 water Rectangular microchannel with inlet/ 30  Re  600 Manifold design is crucial to the distribution
[106] outlet manifold configurations Hydraulic diameter is uniformity of liquid between parallel
440 lm microchannels.
Chein and Chen 2009 DI water Five inlet configuration of D-, N-, S-, U-, 1  number of (i) The vertical flow is helpful to improve the heat
[107] and V- MCHS channel  11, 25  the transfer performance in microchannel.
pressure drop across heat (ii) V-type heat sink has the best heat transfer
sink (kPa)  50 performance among the studied heat sinks.
Sehgal et al. 2011 DI water Parallel microchannel and flow 224  Re  1121, 21 micro- (i) U-type flow configuration gives the best heat
[108] arrangements: U-type, S-type, and P- channels in total. transfer performance takes place, followed
type. by the P-type and S-type.
(ii) P-type flow configuration leads to the lowest
drag resistance.
Siva et al. [109] 2014 water Parallel channels with flow Channel diameters = 88, (i) For the investigated types, I-type configura-
configurations of U-, Z- and I- types 176, 352 (lm), aspect tion has the best heat transfer performance
ratio = 0.1 and least flow mal-distribution.
(ii) Parameters including channel hydraulic diam-
eter, channel flow configurations (U, Z, I type)
and chip power mainly affect the flow
maldistribution.
Pasquier et al. 2015 water Trapezoid header, double header with Hydraulic diameter is The flow uniformity of the core integrated header
[110] bypass holes, core integrated header with 0.992 lm; the mass flow with multilayers is increased by 91%; However, the
one layer, and core integrated header - 5 pressure drop simultaneously also is increased by
rate is1:4  10 kg=s.
with multilayers. 114%.
Anbumeenakshi 2016 DI water Header shapes: rectangular, trapezoidal 200  Re  650; (i) Because of the less generated jet flow, inlet
and and triangular; 25 numbers of rectangular configuration of vertical flow has more uni-
Thansekhar Inlet configurations: vertical flow and microchannels; form flow distribution
[111] inline flow Hydraulic diameter is (ii) At low flow rate, trapezoidal and triangular
763 lm headers have less maldistribution;
Siddique et al. 2017 DI water A U-type inlet/outlet; A dumbbell shape Re = 32, inlet mass flow rate The dumbbell shape inlet/outlet improves flow
[112] inlet/outlet - 4 distribution due to avoid the stagnation zones near
is2  10 kg=s
the microchannel in corners.
Tang et al. [113] 2018 DI water Inlet/outlet positions: Z-, I, and C-type; Heat flux q = 200 KW/m2; I-type with a rectangular header has the better flow
header configurations: rectangular, 0.03 kg/min < mass flow velocity uniformity and the lowest pressure drop.
triangular and symmetric trapezoidal rate < 0.10 kg/min
Yadav et al. 2018 water Two inlets arrangements: the front and Heat flux ranges from 100 An arrangement with two inlets—one suitably
[114] sides of the inlet manifolds to 250 KW/m2; mass flow placed inlet on each of the two opposing sides of the
rate is 0.0015, 0.0017 and inlet manifold has the best temperature uniformity
0.0019 kg/s and enhances the thermal performance.
Wang et al. 2019 water The number of outlets is one, two, three, Heat flux q = 100 KW/m2 (i) The microchannel with four outlets presents a
[115] and four higher TP and lower energy consumption.
(ii) The symmetrical distribution of the four out-
lets causes uniform of flow distribution and
avoids hot spots on the substrate.
Liu et al. [116] 2019 water Two different arrangements: the u = 0.25–1 m/s The interleaved inlets and outlets have a better
interleaved inlets and outlets; the Heat flux q = 40 KW/m2 temperature uniformity compared to sequential
sequential inlets and outlets arrangement.

enhancement in microchannels. Moreover, it is clearly shown how
modifying the geometry impacts key heat transfer mechanisms in
MCHSs. In a word, the modifications in microstructures are easier
to induce turbulence and superimposed vortex motion, which in
turn generate thinner boundary layer and result in higher heat
transfer efficiency. Such geometric modifications are important
to meet the demand of miniaturization and strict temperature lim-
itation within micro heat exchangers. However, there is no an opti-
mal microstructure and a unified standard to provide practical
application in industry.
3.2. Working medium modification
Apart from modifying microstructures, changing working
media in micro heat exchangers also contributes to better flow dis-
tribution and higher heat transfer efficiency. So far, different work-
ing fluids are employed in microchannels, wherein for MCHSs
liquid coolants are preferred rather than gaseous coolants due to
their higher conductivity [127]. Newtonian liquid coolants like
water, oil and organic chemicals have poor thermal conductivity
which causes brings about hindrance in achieving higher effi-
ciency. Efforts have been made to attain efficient heat transfer
and overcome the disadvantages of the conventional liquid cool-
ants through changing working media. On one hand, to overcome
the low thermal conductivity of conventional coolants, recently
discovered nanofluids with unprecedented stability of suspended
nanoparticles have become a potential candidate for next genera-
tion heat transfer medium because of its anomalous thermal con-
ductivity (kn) enhancement property [128–130]. On the other
hand, to overcome the flow pattern limitation, non-Newtonian
 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476 13

(i) Wh Wh

Lh 2

Lh1 Lh1

(a) Trapezoidal header (b) Triangle header

(ii)

(iii) (iv)

Fig. 6. Header design and inlet/out configuration improvement: (i) schematic of header shapes in [121]: (a) trapezoidal header, (b) triangle header; (ii) schematic of the
MCHS with different inlet and outlet configurations in [121], (a) I-type, (b) C-type, (c) V-type, (d) Z-type and (e) U-type; contours of velocity magnitude in the inlet header for
(iii) various inlet and outlet configurations (iv) various inlet header shapes.
14 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476

(i)

(a)C-type (b)Z-type (c)I-type

(ii)

(a)Rectangular header shapes (b)Symmetry trapezoidal header (c)Triangular header shapes

shapes

(iii)

(a)microchannel with (b)microchannel with offset fan- (c)microchannel with triangular

conventional rectangular shaped reentrant cavities reentrant cavities
Fig. 7. Header design and inlet/out configuration improvement: (i) schematic diagram of different inlet/outlet locations in [27]: (a) C-type, (b) Z-type and (c) I-type; (ii)
Schematic diagram of MCHSs header design in [27]: (a) rectangular, (b) symmetry trapezoidal and (c) triangular; (iii) geometry of the different microchannels: (a)
conventional rectangular, (b) offset fan-shaped reentrant cavities and (c) triangular reentrant cavities.

fluid is being studied as potential new alternative working media.
For Newtonian fluids, mass and heat transfer at micro scale is
achieved only by the development of Dean Vortices and boundary
perturbation, thus the heat transfer capacity can’t be further
improved. However, the non-Newtonian fluid flow introduces an
additional nonlinearity, such as nonlinear elasticity in viscoelastic
fluids which is a typical characteristic of non-Newtonian fluids.
In addition to secondary flows, chaotic motions can also be induced
easily in viscoelastic fluids at micro scale, which is an efficient way
to realize the enhancement of mass and heat transfer. Existing
works on the heat transfer enhancement via introducing nanoflu-
ids and non-Newtonian fluids are overviewed in this section.
3.2.1. Nanofluids
Nanofluids are liquid suspensions or dispersions in which the
diameters of particles are within 100 nm and the thermal conduc-
tivities are in orders of magnitudes higher than the base liquids.
They are of great advantage to heat transfer owing to their
significantly-high thermal conductivity with better long-term
steady and rheological properties. More importantly, the micro
 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476 15

Fig. 8. (i) Geometry of the original self-similarity heat sink (SSHS) and the optimized SSHS (unit: mm) developed in [125] (ii) comparision of temperature contour on the
outer surface of (a) the original SSHS and (b) the final optimized SSHS of the cover plate (Qinlet = 5.76 kg/h).

heat exchanger becomes more portable and the process of size
reduction of device is promoted due to the introduction of nanoflu-
ids. The thermal conductivity of nanofluids (kn) depends on various
factors such as diameter, material, volume fraction and bulk tem-
perature of nanoparticles. Generally, increasing the thermal con-
ductivity of a coolant by nanofluids contributes to the
enhancement of heat transfer coefficient (h). In fact, employing
nanofluids is in favor of heat transfer at micro scale as well as at
macro scale. But there are also difficulties accompanying when
handling nanoparticles in microchannel, such as adhesion, trans-
port behavior and particle adsorption, which needs to be solved
during its application.
Recently, there has been an increasing interest in adding
nanoparticles in working media to improve heat transfer perfor-
mance at micro scale. Most researchers focus on the investigation
of thermo-physical properties of nanofluids with various combina-
tion of nanoparticles and base-fluids including copper oxide parti-
cles suspended in water [131–136] and aluminum oxide particles
suspended [137–139] in water, etc., and on the heat transfer per-
formance of using above nanofluids as working fluids in micro heat
exchangers.
As for the thermal properties of nanofluids, the determination
of thermal conductivity and viscosity is essential for evaluating
thermal performance for single phase flow. The model of Hamilton
and Crosser [140] is widely used for comparison of experimental
data by many researchers to determinate the effective kn of
nanofluids given by Eq. (13).
"   #
kpa þ ðn  1Þkbf  ðn  1Þ kbf  kpa /
kn ¼ kf   ð11Þ
kpa þ ðn  1Þkbf þ kbf  kpa /
where the empirical shape factor n equals 3/H. H is the sphericity;
the symbols kn, kb and kpa are the thermal conductivities of the
nanofluid, base fluid and particles, respectively, / is the volume
fraction of nanoparticles. But, it’s worth noting that the value of
kn predicted by this model for nanofluids generally underestimates
the values obtained from experiments. Xuan et al. [141] developed a
theoretical model to calculate the coefficient kn considering the
Brownian motion and the aggregation process of the nanoparticles.
The results based on this model can consist with the theoretical and
experimental data.
The model proposed by Brinkman [142] calculates the effective
viscosity of nanofluid as indicated in Eq. (14):
1
ln ¼ lf ð12Þ
ð1  /Þ2:5
16 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476
where this semi-empirical equation uses volume concentration
extended up to 4%. The value of viscosity predicted by this model
is generally lower than that acquired from experiments.
Many efforts have been made to investigate the potential appli-
cation of nanofluids to achieve higher thermal performance in
comparison with the conventional working media. A synergy of
experimental and numerical approaches is used to acquire maxi-
mum heat transfer efficiency of nanofluids and to further guide
the development of nanofluids. Chein et al. [131,133] conducted
study on the heat transfer performance of flows of Cu–water and
CuO–water nanofluids, respectively. They obtained heat transfer
enhancement by nanofluids with no extra pressure drop produced
due to the small size and low / of nanoparticles. Kalteh et al. [134]
adopted a two-phase flow model to study the laminar forced con-
vective heat transfer of a Cu-water nanofluid inside an
isothermally-heated microchannel. They also obtained heat trans-
fer enhancement by nanofluids as increasing Re and nanoparticle
volume fraction or decreasing nanoparticle diameter, however, at
little price of extra pressure drop.
In a study done by Kalteh et al. [135] Al2O3–water nanofluid
has been applied to a wider MCHS and investigated the hydrody-
namic and they have thermal behavior of nanofluid both numer-
ically and experimentally. They obtained the same conclusion
about the relationship between the average Nu and parameters
such as Re, volume fraction and nanoparticle size. In a more com-
plex MCHS, Nguyen et al. [138] adopted Al2O3–water nanofluid as
working media in a closed system in cooling of microprocessors
or other electronic components. Their experimental data also
clearly supported that the nanoparticles additives in distilled
water have positive effect on the enhancement of convective heat
transfer, and the smaller particles can produce better convective
heat transfer performance. Jung et al. [143] measured the friction
factor and convective heat transfer coefficient of Al2O3–water
nanofluids in rectangular microchannels. The effect of volume
fraction / of nanoparticles on h with constant diameter
(170 nm) of nanoparticle was investigated. Their results revealed
that h of the Al2O3 nanofluid appreciably increased up to 32%
compared to that of distilled water at a volume fraction of 1.8%.
In a very recent work, Li et al. [139] combined Al2O3-water
nanofluids and dimple/protrusion structures (see Fig. 10). They
numerically studied that the effects of nanoparticle volume frac-
tion/, inlet velocity uin and geometrical structure of microchannel
on flow and heat transfer characteristics in detail. Results indi-
cated that, the relative drag resistance f/f0, the relative Nusselt
number Nu/Nu0 as well as thermal performance TP increase with
the increase of uin.
More recently, Ebrahimi [144] numerically investigated conju-
gated hydraulic performance and heat transfer in a rectangular
MCHS equipped with LVGs (longitudinal vortex generators) using
nanofluids at different ranges of Re (see Fig. 9). Remarkable HTE
was obtained using nanofluids (water- Al2O3 and water-CuO) at a
price of extra pressure drop by 3.49–16.85% and 6.5–17.70%,
respectively. They claimed that the overall efficiencies are appar-
ently augmented for two kinds of nanofluids. It is worth mention-
ing that the overall efficiency improves by decreasing the size of
Al2O3 nanoparticles and increasing that of CuO nanoparticles.
Manay and Sahin [145] experimentally studied the effects of the
Re and particle / on heat transfer and pressure drop penalty of
TiO2–water nanofluids in microchannels. They studied the upper
limitation of volume fraction for HTE and further revealed that
thermal resistance starts to decrease once the average diameter
of nanoparticles is smaller than 25 nm. Wherein, no excessive
pressure drop penalty is caused when HTE happens in TiO2–water
nanofluids, which is consistent with the conclusion of previous
1), h depends on the margin of changes in thermal
researches. Since extensive works have been conducted on the
thermal engineering of nanofluids in microchannels, a summary
with more state of the art experimental literature has been pre-
sented in Table 4.
According to the above-mentioned literature, the extensive
researches employ water as the base-fluid of nanofluid. However,
when it comes to high-temperature conditions, it cannot meet
the demand due to only 100 °C for the maximum operating tem-
perature. Thus, there exists another direction to find potential cool-
ants as working nanofluids for high-temperature condition in
MCHS. Currently, liquid metals (LM) [153–155] with superior ther-
mal conductivity can facilitate heat transfer though the liquid
medium to address the above issue. Hence, in high temperature
conditions, many investigators have conducted to evaluate thermal
performance of LMs in MCHS under the laminar regimes. For
example, Sarafraz et al. [156–158] conducted some experiments
to understand the potential effect of LM nano-suspension in
microchannel. They found that the TP with LM nano-suspension
can be as high as 2 compared to water as the working medium.
However, the augmentation on the value of the pressure drop
was synchronously as increasing of thermal performance. In future
work, we need to further investigate on promising LM to make a
trade-off between the enhancement in the thermal performance
and pressure drop.
As mentioned above, we sketch recent numerical and experi-
mental works on thermal properties and the heat transfer perfor-
mance have been outlined in this paper. A relatively systematic
understanding of the convective heat transfer behavior of nanoflu-
ids is summarized for the purpose of providing a guideline for
future research. The possible HTE mechanism of fluids suspended
with nanoparticles is the increasing of specific surface area in
nanoparticle, the Brownian motion of nanoparticles [159,160] in
base fluid, existing of liquid layering around nanoparticles, ballistic
phonon transport rather than diffusive thermal transport in the
nanoparticles and so on [161].
To date, several correlations have been established to predict
the laminar convective heat transfer of nanofluid flows for differ-
ent cases. As aforementioned, the heat transfer behavior of nano-
fluid flow are influenced by the effective thermo-physical
properties of nanofluids which is related with the nanoparticle
size, shape and volume fraction, particle–fluid interaction and par-
ticle migration and so forth. As a result, the general form of Nu for
nanofluid flow yields [162,163],
kp ðqcp Þp
Nunf ¼ f ðRe; Pr; ; ; /; particle size; shape and flow structureÞ
kbf ðqcp Þbf
ð13Þ
Shah [164] established a correlation to calculate Nu for the lam-
inar developing flow of nanofluids, depending on the thermophys-
ical properties and flow parameters. The well-known Shah
equation [164] for laminar flows at constant heat flux boundary
condition is as follows:
(
1=3
1:953ðRePr DxÞ ðRePr DxÞ P 33:3
Nu ¼ ð14Þ
4:364 þ 0:0722RePr Dx ðRePr DxÞ < 33:3
This equation can also be expressed as follows:
(
1:953x1=3  1 x  0:03
Nu ¼ 1
ð15Þ
4:364 þ 0:0722x x > 0:03
From Eq. (15), for fully-developed laminar flow (x* 1), Nu is
proportional to the thermal conductivity while no other thermo-
physical property matters. Nanofluids are expected to have better
heat transfer performance than their base fluids. In the entrance
region (x*
conductivity, specific heat capacity Cp and density (but not on
viscosity).
 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476 17

(i)

(b)
(ii)

(a) (b)
(iii)

(a) (b)

Fig. 9. Heat transfer enhancement by introducing nanofluids to microchannel with LVG structures used in [144]: (i) (a) schematic diagrams of configuration and geometric
parameters; (b) effects of different nanofluid characteristics on flow and temperature fields at Re = 150 (the plane locates at y/H = 0.5). (ii) variations of Nu and Fanning
friction factor with different Re for water-CuO and water-Al2O3 nanofluids with (a) different concentrations (dp = 29 nm); (b) nanoparticle mean diameter (dp) (volume-
fraction = 3.0%); (iii) overall heat transfer efficiency of the microchannels with LVGs for nanofluids containing Al2O3 or CuO nanoparticles. (a) Variable nanoparticle volume-
fraction; (b) variable nanoparticle size.

A correlation for the convective heat transfer coefficient of For dimpled microchannel cases:
nanofluid was suggested by considering the volume fraction of  0:0286  0:0103
f S P
nanoparticles for the laminar regime in microchannels [163]. ¼ 0:0161Re0:0575 Pr1:9772 1þ ð1 þ /Þ8:4505
f0 D D
Nu ¼ 0:014/0:095 Re0:4 Pr0:6 ð16Þ ð17Þ

Li et al. [139] established the formula of flow and heat transfer  0:2829  0:1327
Nu S P
parameters of Al2O3–water nanofluids in dimple/protrusion ¼ 0:01691Re0:2277 Pr0:4722 1þ ð1 þ /Þ1:7177
Nu0 D D
microchannel as shown in Fig. 10. The formula can be described
ð18Þ
as follows:
18 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476

(i)

(ii)

Fig. 10. Heat transfer enhancement by introducing dimple/protrusion structures to microchannels developed in [139]. (i) Schematic diagram of microchannel with the
dimple/protrusion arrangement: (a) starggered; (b) aligned; (ii) schematic diagram of microchannel with dimple and protrusion: (a) dimpled; (b) dimpled + protrusioned.

Table 4
Summary of the recent experimental investigations on heat transfer characteristics in MCHS.

Author Working Configuration Conditions Uncertainty Remarks

medium (maximum)
Manay and TiO2-H2O Rectangular microchannel Four different H: Nu: 5:74% Lower microchannel height showed better thermal
Sahin [146] nanofluid 200,300, 400 and f:3:15% performance, while some penalty for the pressure about
500lm 10–50% from 500 lm to 200 lm.
Ahmed et al. Al2O3-H2O, Triangular/rectangular 50  Re  300; Nu: 2:83% (i) The triangular double-layered MCHS has better tem-
[147] SiO2-H2O double-layered MCHS Three different/: f:4:25% perature uniformity compared to rectangular double-
nanofluids 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9% layered MCHS.
(ii) Higher nanoparticle / has better thermal stability for
both nanofluids than pure water, and the Al2O3-H2O
nanofluid with 0.9% obtained best thermal
performance.
Duangthongsuk SiO2-H2O MCHS with the continuous or Three different /: h: 8% (i) The Nu of SiO2-H2O increased by 3–15% in compar-
and nanofluid single cross-cutting zigzag 0.3, 0.6 and 0.8% ison with that of water. And the CCZ-HS has better
Wongwises flow channel (CZ-HS or CCZ- heat transfer performance compared the CZ-HS by
[148] HS) 2–6%.
(ii) A new equation was correlated of nanofluid flow pass
the heat sinks with multiple zigzag flow channels
based on the Re and Pr.
Vinoth and Al2O3-H2O Cross section of oblique / = 0.25% h: 4% (i) The trapezoidal microchannel cross-section has the
Kumar [149] nanofluid finned MCHS: semicircle highest Nu, while the pressure drop also is higher
trapezoidal square than square and semicircle cross section due to
increase in friction loss.
(ii) The introduction of Al2O3-H2O nanofluid can increase
heat transfer coefficient by 4.6% in comparison with
water.
Simsek et al. Water based Rectangular microchannel Three different Nu: 9:9% (i) The presence of silver nanowire suspensions can aug-
[150] silver rectangular (lm): h: 9.4% ment heat transfer with no increase in the pumping
nanowire 200  50,100  50, f: 9:8% power.
suspensions 70  50 (ii) The silver nanofluid has the lowest wall temperature
in microchannel compared to the water.
Sarafraz et al. Ag-water Rectangular microchannel Three different x: h: 11.1% (i) Up to 47% enhancement in thermal performance for
[151] nanofluid 0.01%, 0.05% and Ag-water nanofluid at weight concentrations of 0.1%
0.1% compared to water.
(ii) The TP for Ag-water nanofluid at x = 0.05% and
Re = 1400 is 37% higher than that for water.
Zhao et al. [152] TiO2-H2O Cylindrical grooves; Aligned three depths (H = 1, Nu: 5:0% (i) The introduction of TiO2- H2O nanofluid (x=0.3%) in
nanofluid and staggered arrangements; 2 and 3 mm) f: 1:18% heat sink with staggered arrangement grooves
0%  x  0.5% (H = 2 mm) has the best thermal performances
(ii) The TP can reach 9.6% with staggered arrangement
grooves in comparison with aligned arrangement
grooves.
 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476
For dimpled and protrusioned microchannel cases:
 0:2868  0:1464
f S P been demonstrated that employing pseudo-plastic fluids, such as
¼ 0:2587Re0:1307 Pr0:5331 1þ ð1 þ /Þ2:6973
f0 D D
ð19Þ
 0:1544  0:2348
Nu S P
¼ 0:0240Re0:3615 Pr1:2596 1þ ð1 þ /Þ3:4983
Nu0 D D
ð20Þ
Regarding HTE by nanofluids, a number of mechanisms respon-
sible for HTE have been proposed. Keblinski et al. [165] explored
these four specific mechanisms of nanofluids: Brownian motion of
nanoparticles, the nature of heat transport in the nanoparticles,
molecular-level layering of liquid at the liquid/particle interface,
and the effects of nanoparticle clustering. They concluded that
Brownian motion appears not as important as other mechanisms.
But an in-depth understanding of the remaining proposed effects
requires further experimental and numerical studies. Therewith,
Wen and Ding [166] experimentally investigated the convective
heat transfer of nanofluids with c-Al2O3 nanoparticles through a
copper tube in the laminar flow regime. It has been observed that
convective HTE was particularly significant in the entrance region
and at high Re condition, while the mechanisms responsible for
convective HTE could not be simply laid in the augment of effective
kn. In addition, particle migration in the fluids results in a non-
uniform distribution of thermal conductivity and viscosity field,
which reduces the thermal boundary layer thickness and then lead
to HTE. Similarly, the experimental results of Yang et al. [167] also
argued that nanoparticle additive may enhance heat transfer coef-
ficient by these two mechanisms: an increase in kn of the overall
system, and the movement of nanoparticles relative to the stream-
lines. Collectively, the interaction between fluid flow and heat
transfer performance becomes more complicated due to the adding
of nanoparticles. The mechanism of HTE still needs more work to be
revealed, although some attempts to identify and model this mech-
anism has been accomplished with only very limited success [168].
3.2.2. Non-Newtonian fluids
As aforementioned, Re is usually small in microchannel, where
surface to volume ratio is generally large due to the micro-scale
dimensions. Under this condition, Newtonian fluid flows are lim-
ited by the dominance of viscous effects, and the heat transfer is
weakened. It becomes difficult to get efficient heat transfers at
micro scale as expected using Newtonian fluid solely. The main
discrepancy of Newtonian fluid and non-Newtonian fluid lies in
the nonlinear rheology of non-Newtonian fluid, which has a pro-
found influence on the flow pattern. For the non-Newtonian fluid,
viscosities are mostly shear- or/and time-dependent which lead to
the nonlinear relationship between shear stress and shear rate.
Applications in microchannel have been developed by taking full
advantage of the additional nonlinearity of non-Newtonian fluid,
including detection, mixing, heat transfer and separation of various
biological and chemical species on a microchip. Moreover, there
also exist many cases where the rheological properties of working
media show non-Newtonian behavior. Therefore, it is a necessity to
investigate the heat transfer characteristics of non-Newtonian fluid
flow in microchannels. Generally, amongst the existing literatures,
pseudo-plastic fluids and viscoelastic fluids, two typical types of
non-Newtonian fluid, are preferred as working medium at micro
scale. Pseudo-plastic fluids apparent that viscosity decreases with
the increase of shear rate, which is called shear thinning phe-
nomenon. It has been revealed that shear-thinning fluid is able
to augment heat transfer with lower thermal resistance, thus
strengthen the overall thermal performance in microchannels. In
19
food industry, suspension and emulsion, such as soy sauce, tomato
juice and apple sauce, are pseudoplastic fluids. And it has already
Carboxyl Methyl Cellulose (CMC) aqueous solutions, as working
fluids can promote heat transfer in the thermal systems [169–
174]. Viscoelastic fluids, a branch of non-Newtonian fluids, widely
exist in nature and industrial areas, such as solutions of flexible
high-molecular-weight polymer, polymer melts and aqueous
solutions of some surfactants. Because of the flexibility of the
long-chain polymer molecules [175–178] or surfactant micelle
structures [179], an additional elastic stress is induced which is
determined by the history of the flow motion [180]. For instance,
most of biofluids exhibit non-Newtonian fluid behaviors
[181–185], like blood plasma and lipid solutions, and their flows
in capillaries are quite similar to the appropriate viscoelastic fluids
flow in microchannels. In this section, focus on applications of non-
Newtonian fluids in the field of heat transfer enhancement has
been discussed [186,187]. The elastic nonlinearity, similar to the
inertial nonlinearity, can also induce chaotic or even turbulent flow
motions, the so-called purely elastic instability or elastic turbu-
lence [188–190]. Thus, it can increase heat transfer efficiency in
micro heat exchanger. This section will review the researches on
heat transfer enhancement by pseudo plastic fluids and viscoelas-
tic fluids, respectively.
(i) Pseudo-plastic fluids
In macro-scale systems, Tso et al. [173] theoretically studied the
heat transfer of power-law non-Newtonian fluids in fully devel-
oped laminar flows between fixed parallel plates. The effect of vis-
cous dissipation and ratio of heat flux at boundary were taken into
account for both shear-thinning and shear-thickening fluids. Sas-
mal and Chhabra [169] numerically investigated this problem in
static power-law fluids with a square cylinder submerged. They
obtained HTE in shear-thinning fluids cases, even by 100%
improved under appropriate conditions. While in shear-
thickening cases, the flow has deleterious effect on heat transfer
by 30–40% depending upon the index n.
Besides the above researches in macro-scale systems, pseudo
plastic fluids are also widely employed in the micro-scale systems.
Yang et al. [191] simulated the heat transfer of CMC aqueous solu-
tions with four different flow control microstructures as illustrated
in Fig. 11. Their results show that in the flows with lower dynamic
viscosity and higher velocity, the heat transfer is stronger due to
the enhancement of interaction between main flow and near-
wall flow. Amongst their simulated cases, flows with CMC2000,
whose shear-thinning effect is strongest, have largest heat transfer
coefficient compared with cases of other concentrations. They also
demonstrated that different structures follow different superiority.
For instance, the pin-fin one has the most uniform temperature
distribution on micro-structured walls at a certain flow rate. The
protrusion one has the minimum relative friction factor f/f0. In
other words, the protrusion is a better choice if the pressure drops
are strictly limited. The V-groove one has the minimum entropy
generation and maximum TP (see Fig. 12) which can accomplish
large heat removal with high flow rate and pressure drop. How-
ever, different structures have an optimal condition. Thus there’s
no unified microstructure to guide the actual condition. In the
future, we can further enhance heat transfer by combining non-
newtonian fluids and optimized microstructure based on Yang’s
work [191].
Apart from studying nanofluids, Li et al. [192,193] also investi-
gated the non-Newtonian fluids flow at the same microchannel as
shown in Fig. 10. Among the fluids they used, CMC2000 is the opti-
mal one with largest TP, even achieving 2.1, because of the largest
shear-thinning effect. They ascribe the HTE effect to the variation
20 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476

(i)

(ii)

(iii)

Fig. 11. Heat transfer enhancement by introducing shear-thinning fluid as working liquid in the microchannel with flow control structures studied in [191]. (i) Temperature
distributions (unit: K) and streamlines on the structured wall (at x-y plate); Dynamic viscosity distributions (unit: Pa s) and streamlines (ii) in the stream-wise middle
sections; (iii) microchannel with protruded wall in the perpendicular to stream-wise middle sections at Q = 4  105 kg s1: (a) CMC100; (b) CMC500; (c) CMC2000; (d)
CMC4000.

 b
of m of working substances which strengthened the secondary flow 3n þ 1
and flow separation in the dimpled/protruded passage. The rela- Nu=Nu0 ¼ AFðnÞRec Pr d ðd=DÞe FðnÞ ¼ an ð21Þ
4n
tively larger m intensifies the separation bubbles in the proposed
passage as shown in Fig. 13, which is of great advantage for the In recent years, the researchers start to concentrate on the syn-
improvement of heat transfer [192]. Moreover, they proposed ergy effect of non-Newtonian fluids and the manifold microchan-
new correlations of f/f0 and Nu/Nu0 for the flow and heat transfer nel (MMC) heat sink (see Fig. 14). Li et al. [194] numerically
of CMC aqueous solutions in the dimpled and protruded found that pseudo-plastic fluid flow can apparently promote the
microchannel as follows [192]: heat transfer efficiency. The emergence of secondary flow induced
 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476 21

(i)

(ii)

a b
(iii)

a b
(iv)

a b

Fig. 12. Heat Transfer enhancement and entropy generation reduction of non-Newtonian laminar flow in microchannels with four flow control structures studied in [191]: (i)
geometrical structures of flow field; (ii) variations of f/f0; (iii) variations of S0 /S000 and (iv) Variations of TP with different flow rate and CMC concentration (a) the microchannels
with pin-finned and V-grooved (b) the microchannels with protruded and cylinder-ribbed.
22 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476

Fig. 13. Heat transfer enhancement by introducing shear-thinning fluid as working liquid in the microchannel with dimples and protrusions studied in [192]. Dynamic
viscosity distributions (unit: Pa s) and streamlines (i) in the stream-wise middle sections; (ii) in the perpendicular to stream-wise middle sections: (a) CMC500,
Q = 4.68  105 kg s1, d/D = 0.2, (b) CMC500, Q = 6.21  105 kg s1, d/D = 0.2, (c) CMC2000, Q = 6.21  105 kg s1, d/D = 0.2, (d) CMC2000, Q = 6.21  105 kg s1, d/D = 0.3.

by pseudo-plastic fluid is mainly responsible for the HTE since it
strengthens the flow separation and reattachment as demon-
strated in Fig. 14. Besides, the temperature is more uniformly dis-
tributed by using pseudo-plastic fluid (see Fig. 15(i)). In contrast,
the heat transfer in dilatant fluid flow is dominated by the conduc-
tion as shown in Fig. 15(ii) and its shear-thickening property is
unfavorable for HTE.
Ebrahimi et al. [195] numerically investigated the same prob-
lem in a rectangular MCHS equipped with longitudinal vortex gen-
erators (LVG). To highlight the effect of shear-thinning behavior,
CMC aqueous solutions with different concentrations were scruti-
nized. Their results showed that TP increased by 6.82–31.18% in
CMC aqueous solutions comparing with Newtonian fluid. Addition-
ally, Nu is greatly enhanced by 24–135% by employing the chan-
nels with LVGs compared to the plain channel. As mentioned
before, the intensified fluid mixing and secondary flow, and the
disruption of thermal boundary layer growth are all of advantage
for HTE. In this work, HTE is a result of the coupling of shear-
thinning fluids together with LVGs. On one hand, increasing the
attack angle and the lateral distance of VGs can strengthen the sec-
ondary flow, so the thermal boundary layer growth is disrupted,
resulting in high efficient heat transfer (see Fig. 16(i)). On the other
hand, the reduction of viscosity in CMC (shear-thinning fluids)
solution makes the flow less stable, which may initiate and/or aug-
ment the eddy generation. As a result, the mixing of hot and cold
fluids is further intensified, and the heat transfer performance is
greatly improved (see Fig. 16(ii)).
To sum up, pseudo-plastic fluid flow promotes heat transfer
whereas dilatant fluid flow impedes it [196–198] in both steady
and unsteady flow regimes. The shear-thinning property is one of
the main causes of secondary flows which improve the heat trans-
fer performance. The shortcoming of pseudo-plastic fluid is that it
has high viscosity, thereby increasing thermal resistance. In future,
more experimental studies should be done to validate the obtained
numerical results and put them into practical application. More-
over, more work is essential to attain an insight into the correla-
tions between heat transfer and different flow control
microstructures in pseudo-plastic fluid flow.
(ii) Viscoelastic fluids
In this subsection, another commonly used non-Newtonian
fluid which possesses both viscosity and elasticity is introduced
and significances of its viscoelastic effect on heat transfer at micro
scale are discussed. It has very effective and positive impact on
heat transfer process. This unique method emerged in recent years
and is receiving attention since it circumvents the low-Re limita-
tion to excite turbulence and leads to less complex and expensive
fabrication processes compared with modifying structures.
There exists both nonlinear inertial and elastic effects, but they
are not necessarily to coexist in viscoelastic fluid flow [199]. Purely
elastic instability and turbulence can be induced at high Deborah
number (De) or Weissenberg number (Wi) which represents the
strength of the elastic nonlinearity, in microchannels. When the
 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476 23

(i) (ii)

Fig. 14. Heat transfer enhancement by introducing shear-thinning fluid as working medium in the manifold microchannel studied in [194]: (i) configurations of traditional
microchannel (TMC) and manifold microchannel (MMC), (a) 3D TMC configuration; (b) 3D MMC configuration (zoom in: cross-section and orientation of fluid flow); (ii)
comparison of flow fields of different fluid as working liquid in the center region (at Re = 218.5 and z = 0.000510 m) of MMC. (a) Pseudo-plastic fluid, n = 0.6; (b) Newtonian
fluid, n = 1.0; (c) dilatant fluid, n = 1.6. The contour of the velocity component is in x direction.

(i) (ii)
Fig. 15. Heat transfer enhancement by introducing shear-thinning fluid as working liquid in the manifold microchannel studied in [194] (i) Nu of pseudo-plastic fluid flow at
n = 0.6 in both MMC and TMC (cases: Re = 218.5); (ii) comparison of the wall shear stresses of power-law fluids in MMC: (a) pseudo-plastic fluid, n = 0.6; (b) Newtonian fluid,
n = 1.0; (c) dilatant fluid, n = 1.6 (cases: Re = 21.8).

nonlinear elasticity dominates the flow in viscoelastic fluid flow, De ¼ k=tres Wi ¼ kU c =Lc ð22Þ
nonlinear inertia can be neglected and De and Wi can be defined
where k is the relaxation time; tres is the residence time in experi-
as follows [200]:
ment; Uc and Lc are characteristic velocity and length, respectively.
24 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476
(i)
Fig. 16. Heat transfer enhancement by introducing non-Newtonian fluid in the rectangular microchannel with longitudinal vortex generators (LVG) proposed in [195]: (i)
Contours of temperature and vectors (Results are shown on a cross section located at the exit of the main zone). (ii) Contours of strain rate for pseudoplastic liquid flow. (The
plane is located at y/H = 0.5).
Many researches focused on the purely elastic instability or
elastic turbulence and argued that the key to induce elastic insta-
bility and turbulence in a microchannel is the existence of curved
or irregular geometry [190]. Significant mixing enhancement by
elastic turbulence has been confirmed in a serpentine microchan-
nel more than a decade ago [201], which provides a guidance for
the potential application of elastic instability and turbulence. In
fact, heat transfer is a result of mixing between the cold and hot
fluids, so it is also predictable to enhance the heat transfer by the
exciting elastic turbulence in microchannels. In recent years, heat
transfer in the viscoelastic fluid in milli- and micro- channel has
appeared in works of many researchers. These works provide a
guidance to design micro heat transfer exchanger technologies
and lab-on-a-chip devices with viscoelastic fluids as coolant. Tat-
sumi et al. [202] conducted a first experimental study on the ther-
mal performance of viscoelastic fluid flow in a serpentine channel
with a characteristics length of 5 mm (see Fig. 17(i)). In their
experiments, Nu increased with Re in viscoelastic fluid flow, but
kept approximately constant in Newtonian fluid flow. The flow
instability induced by the normal stresses in viscoelastic fluids
was argued to be responsible for the heat transfer enhancement.
Unsteady flows with a large fluctuation and longitudinal vortex-
like secondary flows were confirmed in viscoelastic fluid flow
through flow visualization, particularly in the downstream of the
serpentine milli-channel (see Fig. 17(ii)). Whalley et al. [203]
investigated the heat transfer of viscoelastic fluid flow flow in a
smaller serpentine channel of around 1 mm. They observed very
promising heat transfer enhancement by up to 300% through excit-
ing elastic turbulence.
Li et al. [204] further shrank the serpentine channel to 200 mm
and Re in their work is extremely low. Heat transfer enhancement
was also achieved when the elasticity dominated the flow. The
experimental observations were also qualitatively confirmed by
their numerical simulations [204,205]. In addition to heat transfer
enhancement in serpentine microchannels, Traore et al. [206]
recently conducted an experimental study on the thermal perfor-
mance of viscoelastic fluid flow in a von Kármán swirling device
where a regime of elastic turbulence was induced. Significant heat
transfer enhancement close to 4 times to that in the purely conduc-
tive case was achieved by an unsteady toroidal vortex in the tran-
sitional regime, and a randomly fluctuating spiral vortex in the
elastic turbulent regime (see Fig. 18). Moreover, they confirmed
the similarity of the heat transfer scenario with the passive scalar
transport phenomena in isothermal and non-isothermal flows as
(ii)
there is rather weak effect of the heat transfer process on the flow
pattern characteristics.
To sum up, heat transfer enhancement by viscoelastic fluids in
the above investigations are mainly ascribed to irregular flow
structures due to the interaction of a first normal-stress difference
and streamlines curvature [207,208]. Introducing viscoelastic fluid
instead of Newtonian fluid paves a simpler way to exciting flow
instabilities and even turbulent flow states and thereby enhances
heat transfer in microchannel. The major fundamental interest
and applications of viscoelastic flows has revealed previously
unobserved instabilities and flow phenomena caused by viscoelas-
ticity. However, owing to the lack of corresponding study, the
mechanisms of heat transfer enhancements, the scaling of Nu
and Wi, the interaction process between heat transport and veloc-
ity field of elastic turbulence, and so forth, still need to be clarified
[204]. In future, combining with the elasticity-induced nonlinear
effect, the state-of-the art microfluidic devices which meet the
multi-function for fluids manipulation, reaction, and analysis will
not only be a realistic hope, but also reasonable tools for multidis-
ciplinary researches. Thus, because of the superior benefits of pas-
sive method, this method will still be a promising topic with more
novel designs and further applications in industry, biology and
medicine on the horizon.
4. Active micro techniques
Comparing with passive methods in microscale, active methods
have parts that require additional energy to actuate or give a driv-
ing force. There are a broad variety of active methods, including
acoustics [209], pulsating inlet [210–214], electrohydrodynamics
(EHD) [215–218], electrokinetics (EK) [219–221], magnetohydro-
dynamics (MHD) [222–224] and others [225]. The objective of this
section is to outline the mechanisms that should be taken into con-
sideration when studying active techniques in microscale.
4.1. Pulsating inlet
Heat transfer enhancement can be achieved by imposing time
pulsing cross-flows into a main channel. Specifically, pulsating
flow can be not only time dependent but also spatially dependent
including pulsating inlet flow and the channel geometric wavy
configuration [226]. Pulsating inlet and channel waviness have
exhibited their great potential in engineering applications,
 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476 25

(i)

(ii)

Fig. 17. Heat transfer enhancement by employing a viscoelastic fluid flow in a serpentine channel studied in [202]. (i) Schematic diagram of the experimental apparatus and
the serpentine channel used in the heat transfer measurements; (ii) visualization for the curvature and streamwise position (upper and lower images shown in eash figure are
the side view and overhead view of the channel respectively) at different Re and Wi.

including heat transfer [227–231] in stirring engines, electronics
cooling, nuclear reactors, gas turbines. Moreover, they are also fre-
quently encountered in bio-fluid systems [232]. Comparing with
steady flow, pulsatile flow has a more complex nature. Many param-
eters of pulsating flows and geometric configuration have an impact
on the hydrodynamic and thermal behaviors [233,234]. The most
critical parameters of pulsating flows are pulsating frequency, pul-
sating amplitude and Re. Researches about flows with inlet pulsa-
tions have been performed to guide a better design of thermal
equipment in different microchannels by means of experimental
investigations, numerical simulations as well as theoretical analysis.
Some researches were done in simple channels such as in circu-
lar pipes and square mini-channels (Guo and Sung [235], Habib
et al. [236], Jun et al. [237], Chattopadhyay et al. [206], Rahgoshay
et al. [238], etc.). Some researchers argued that pulsating flow can
be a double-edged sword. It can improve heat transfer at certain
frequency and Re but can also deteriorate the heat transfer under
some other conditions. For example, the results of Guo and Sung
[235] at Re = 500 and Pr = 7 indicated that the pulsation always
promotes the heat transfer at a large amplitude (Af  1), but
reduces heat transfer at certain frequency and small amplitude
(0 < Af < 1). The pulsating characteristics such as pulsating fre-
quency and amplitude and the hydrodynamic parameters such as
Re play an important role on heat transfer performance. Similar
results were also obtained by Habib et al. [236] and Jun et al.
[237]. In Jun et al, the HTE was ascribed to thermal boundary bro-
ken by the pulsating flow. Some researchers claimed little or neg-
ative effect of pulsating on heat transfer. Hemida et al. [239]
26 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476
Fig.18. Heat transfer characteristics by employing viscoelastic fluid flow in a swirling device studied in [206]. Dependence of the turbulent intensity on the vertical
coordinate. The symbols refer to the Weissenberg number: rhombs ( ) – Wi = 0, squares ( ) – Wi = 0.8, triangles ( ) – Wi = 7.7, circle ( ) – Wi = 15.4.
claimed that pulsating inlet produced little changes in heat trans-
fer, even the change being always negative. In a circular tube under
pulsating flow condition in the laminar regime [210], Chattopad-
hyay et al concluded that the time-averaged heat transfer remains
the same with that under constant flow inlet in the range of their
study (f: 0–20 Hz; Af < 1.0). As it can be seen, even in a simple pipe,
the obtained conclusions are not consistent and sometimes are
even in contradictory. Therefore, a thorough investigation on the
pulsating flow is necessary to fully understand the flow features
and subsequent effects on heat transfer. Similar controversial is
also reported in rectangular mini-channel. Mehta and Khandekar
[213] experimentally measured the heat transfer of deionized
(DI) and de-gassed water passing through a square mini-channel
where Re is 170 in their work. For their measured frequency range,
the overall heat transfer enhancement is rather limited for laminar
pulsating flow compared with steady flow with same time-
averaged flow Re. Persoons et al. [211] presented an in-depth
experimental investigation on the characteristics of the pulsating
flow and heat transfer in a single rectangular microchannel in a
range of 50 < Re (=Res) < 400 and 35 < Rep < 225. Accordingly, they
[240] measured the heat transfer performance in minichannel.
Through their results however, they found that the overall heat
transfer could be enhanced through pulsating flow compared with
the steady flow case, which even reached 40% under specific con-
ditions. Moreover, the enhancement of heat transfer increases with
the increasing Rep/Re under the condition of large pulsation ampli-
tude (Rep/Re > 0.2), and was negligible for other conditions. In addi-
tion to the conventional working fluids such as water or air,
researchers also combine pulsating flow with nanofluids to achieve
a better thermal performance. Rahgoshay et al. [238] simulated the
nanofluids flow under pulsating inlet condition in a two-
dimensional circular with isothermal walls. They observed heat
transfer enhancement which increases slightly with the frequency
and the amplitude of pulsation.
In recent years, attentions are shifted to introduce pulsating
flow into more and more complex microchannels, e.g., T-shaped
microchannel, convergent-divergent microchannel, wavy
microchannel, manifold microchannel and so forth. The following
overviews are the existing studies of this kind. Glasgow et al.
[226] focused on a simple T-shaped microchannel at Re = 0.3. By
pumping two reagents in a sinusoidal and periodic fashion super-
imposed over a constant flow rate, they noticed that the interface
was stretched, retained one fold, and swept through the confluence
zone, and the mixing occurs shortly in the downstream of the con-
fluence. Similar conclusion is also drawn by Afzal and Kim [241] in
a convergent- divergent microchannel i.e., the introduction of pul-
sating flow can provide efficient mixing in a shorter length. Nandi
and Chattopadhyay [212] numerically investigated the flow devel-
oping process in wavy microchannels under pulsating inlet flow
condition (see Fig. 19). Their results indicated that the wavy sur-
face in the channel has little effect on the main flow due to the
dominance of viscous forces and the lack of recirculation at very
low Re (Re  10). As a result, the heat transfer performance with
low pulsation amplitude (A = 0.2) is almost the same as that in
the steady case. However, it is improved significantly at all ampli-
tude (0  A  1) once Re exceeds a modest value. They argue that
when the pulsation predominates the viscous force, the flow tends
to be unsteady due to the rolling up of the fluid in the shear layer
near the wall and the thermal boundary layer was destabilized. The
frequent interaction between near-wall fluid and core fluid accel-
erated the flow to reach thermally fully developed status. As a
result, the heat transfer performance was improved comparing
with that in steady case. In addition to wavy microchannels, Nandi
and Chattopadhyay [242] also studied flow developing and heat
transfer in raccoon type microchannel under inlet flow pulsation
(see Fig. 20). Therein, a sharp increase of heat transfer performance
arises when the superimposition of pulsating inlet makes the flow
unsteady enough. At a low value of frequency and amplitude, the
viscous effect is dominant, while at a higher value, the pulsation
effect is prominent and make the hydrodynamic and thermal
boundary layer thinner. Wang et al. [243] focused on laminar pul-
sating flow in a microchannel with LVG. They obtained that the
parameters such as the amplitude and period of the pulsating flow
profoundly affect the flow and heat transfer performance. The
introduction of LVG structure strengthens the longitudinal vortex.
The combination of pulsating flow and LVG structure further
improves HTE by enhancing the field synergy between velocity
fields and temperature gradient and disturbing the developing of
boundary layer. Recently, Zhang et al. [244] imposed three types
of pulsating inlet condition in a manifold MCHS, including
square-wave, sinusoidal-wave and semi-sinusoidal wave pulsating
inlets (see Fig. 21). They observed heat transfer enhancement for
all the cases and the thermal performance factor TP in some cases
even reaches more than 3 (see Fig. 21(ii)). They ascribed the HTE to
the periodic developing flow structure and the secondary flows
induced by the pulsating inlet.
 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476 27

Fig. 19. Heat transfer enhancement by introducing pulsating inlet flow condition in wavy microchannels proposed in [212]. (a) Schematic diagram of the wavy microchannel;
(b) temporal evolution of local axial velocity at inlet; (c) comparison of time averaged Nu with Re for variable amplitude and steady flow; (d) comparison of thermal
development length with varying Re for different Struhal number (St) and steady flow.

(i)

(ii)

Fig. 20. Heat transfer enhancement by introducing pulsating inlet flow condition in raccoon type microchannel proposed in [242]. (i) Schematic diagram of a raccoon type
microchannel and sinusoidal wave of inlet velocity; (ii) comparison of enhancement ratio with variable St for different amplitudes at (a) Re = 10 and (b) Re = 100.

Similar HTE induced by pulsating flow was also obtained in a
fractal-like microchannel. Xu et al. [245] found that pulsation can
improve the cooling capacity and reduce the maximum tempera-
ture. However, there exists a critical Re beyond which the enhance-
ment factors start to decrease within the investigated frequency
range. Moreover, they proposed a power-law correlation to predict
the HTE (dNu, dNu = (Nup–Nu0)/Nu0) by fitting their experiment and
simulation results as [245]:
0:08
dNu ¼ 3:627  1013:06 Re3:681 f 1 ð23Þ
In general, the pulsating inlet condition can improve heat trans-
fer performance at specific parameters, which has great potential
in engineering applications. The mechanism of HTE can be
achieved as that the introduction of pulsation induces turbulence
near the channel wall surface, which in turn reduces the thermal
boundary layer thickness and increases the chaotic mixing of fluid.
28 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476

(i)

(ii)

Fig. 21. Heat transfer enhancement by introducing pulsating inlet and pseudo-plastic fluid flow in a MMHS studied in [244]. (i) Patterns of pulsation inlet: (a) square-wave
inlet; (b) square-wave inlet; (c) sinusoidal-wave; (d) semi-sinusoidal-wave; (e) half semi-sinusoidal-wave. (ii) Overall thermal performance evaluation TP at difference
amplitude under pulsating flow with (a) square-wave input (b) sinusoidal-wave input, C = 0.04 s.

In future, more work should be done to fully understand the pul-
sating effect on the heat transfer as well as to model the pulsatile
flow.
4.2. Acoustic wave
In addition to pulsating flow, acoustically induced vibrations, as
an active technique to achieve better heat transfer, have also been
investigated. Careful consideration of the forces due to viscosity
and surface tension shows its importance when designing a more
efficient microactuator to study heat transfer in a single device.
As an efficient alternative, mechanical disturbance is induced by
surface acoustic wave (SAW) [246] with electromechanical trans-
ducer employed to manipulate fluids flowing in adjacent structures
[247]. Put simply, acoustic waves propagate into fluid media and
induce pressure fluctuations, resulting in the disturbance of the
laminar-flow pattern to facilitate mixing. This effect is known as
acoustic streaming. This acoustic streaming phenomenon results
in a more prominent perturbation of the surrounding fluids greatly
facilitating the heat and mass transport of fluids. Some researchers
indicate that acoustic streaming can disrupt the bulk fluid flow due
to wave attenuation, creating rotating vortices in the boundary
layer within the microchannel and enhancing heat transfer. For
example, Berry [248] numerically studied SAW to increase heat
transfer in a microchannel. He found that at low Re, the SAW can
induce acoustic streaming to disrupt the thermal boundary layer
compared to no SAW case (Fig. 22). Moreover, he acquired an
important conclusion as follows: when the acoustic streaming
 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476
Fig. 22. Heat transfer enhancement by introducing surface acoustic wave (SAW) in
a straight microchannel studied in [248]. Numerical results of streamlines and
temperature contours for water flow in the channel of length of 1000 mm and width
of 100 mm: (a) without SAW coupled with laminar inlet flow; (b) with SAW coupled
with laminar inlet flow.
velocity is greater than the bulk channel stream velocity, rotating
vortices can form and further fracture the flow. In contrast, when
the acoustic streaming velocity is less than the bulk stream veloc-
ity in microchannel, advection dominates the flow, and rotating
vortices can’t take shape. This conclusion has an instructive role
to choose related parameters. Moreover, the production and prop-
agation of the acoustic waves generated by piezoelectric transduc-
ers cause the fluid heating. Thus, it is possible to utilize acoustic
induced vibration for two aspects: acoustothermal heating or
enhancement of boiling heat transfer.
Some researchers [209,249–252] investigated the bulk force
from acoustic fields. The actuation has a significant effect on the
creation and evolution of vapor bubbles by external interfacial
forces that affect the bubbles’ contour and accelerate their detach-
ment [253]. Notably, acoustic vibrations can lead to the creation of
small cavitation bubbles that enhance mixing in the bulk liquid
and thereby increase convection-induced heat transfer with lim-
ited effects on nucleate boiling. Kim et al. [250] studied the heat
transfer performance under ultrasonic vibration in three regimes:
natural convection, subcooled boiling, and saturated boiling. Their
results indicated that HTE in the saturated boiling regime arises
due to the acoustic radiation pressure acting directly on the bub-
bles. Ang et al. [205] experimentally investigated the effects of high
29
efficiency. High frequency acoustic excitation was demonstrated
as an efficient method to enhance the heat transfer in nucleate
boiling regime utilizing interactions between acoustic waves and
vapor bubbles. Compared with non-acoustic excitation, acousti-
cally induced vibrations can produce an improvement of up to
50% reduction in the surface temperature with 106 Hz order
frequencies.
Recently, Boziuk et al. [252] investigated the effect of boiling
heat transfer on plain and textured (surface-embedded)
microchannels using acoustic actuation and proposed that acoustic
actuation by low-power acoustic power can be used to strongly
enhance boiling heat transfer because of the acoustic field imped-
ing the formation of large vapor columns and inhibiting the insta-
bility these columns into a vapor film. Moreover, acoustic
actuation in surface microchannels has a profound effect on
increasing in the rate of bubble formation and detachment and
reduces the surface superheat. In more details, the plain surface
in the CHF can enhance more than 66% (from 110 W/cm2 to
183 W/cm2) and the textured surface can improve 31% (from
350 W/cm2 to 460 W/cm2 with an average 7 °C reduction in surface
superheat) in stagnant bulk fluid.
Overall, acoustic effect on thermal bubble dynamics in a
microchannel is necessary and significant, not only for an under-
standing of the related physical mechanism but also for the practi-
cal application of acoustic-enhanced boiling heat transfer in the
microcooling device. In the future, we need to study the effects
of acoustic vibration on boiling heat transfer coefficient and
develop a novel heat transfer enhancement technique.
5. Conclusions
Microfluidic cooling holds potential promise, where a large
amount of research and technology development has been going
on for the last decades on both passive and active heat transfer
enhancement methods. The important concluding remarks in line
with the here-presented literature are as follows:
(i) Manifold inlet/outlet arrangement and header design play
an important role on ensuring a better flow distribution in
the MCHS. Thus, the decrease of flow mal-distribution
through the modification of inlet/outlet arrangement and
header design can improve the distribution uniformity
resulting in a better MCHS.
(ii) The introduction of Non-Newtonian fluids, especially includ-
ing pseudo-plastic and viscoelastic fluids can enhance heat
transfer performance at the low Re. This topic in heat trans-
fer enhancement method will be a promising topic for biol-
ogy and medical applications in the near future.
(iii) When considering the active methods, this review presents
the pulsating inlet flow and acoustic wave. For the pulsating
inlet flow, it is given to heat transfer fluid to disturbing/
breaking thermal boundary layer through flow instability
in laminar flow. For acoustic wave, the mechanism on ther-
frequency (106 Hz) acoustic waves on heat transfer performance mal performance hasn’t still been clarified.
in the nucleate boiling regime. They found that the vibration
amplitude played a profound effect on heat transfer performance. As repeatedly mentioned in the above discussion, attaining
For low vibration amplitudes (1 nm), heat transfer enhancement maximum heat transfer efficiencies is required to develop attrac-
is induced by the detachment of vapor bubbles from the heated tive heat transfer approaches, which requires a thorough to under-
surface and the thermal mixing from the acoustic streaming. Upon standing of fundamental physicals mechanisms responsible for the
increasing the vibration amplitude (ns  108 m), the heat transfer
augmentation was ascribed to the rapid bursting of vapor bubbles
happening at the liquid/air interface. By further increasing the
vibration amplitude, rapid atomization disperses the vapor bub-
bles which were accumulated at the liquid/air interface, strength-
ened the stream and leads to a recovery in the heat transfer
variation of flow structures and associated heat transfer character-
istics in microchannels. A state-of-the-art review about heat trans-
fer performance in microchannels was presented in this paper,
where the current research status on HTE mechanisms in
microchannel constitutes the main focus. The investigations have
been carried out on heat transfer characteristics by two means:
30 S. Li et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (2019) 118476
passive and active methods. For passive methods, this paper
mainly discusses two aspects: modifying geometry and changing
working media. Under most circumstances, the HTE mechanism
through geometry modification can be attributed to providing
more contact surface area, and interrupting the boundary layer for-
mation or generating better flow distribution. Whereas, the HTE
mechanism for changing working media mainly utilizes the char-
acteristics of working media to enhance thermal conductivity or
induce flow instability. For active methods, this paper focuses on
two ways: pulsating inlet flow and acoustically induced vibrations.
Pulsating inlet flow can augment heat transfer efficiency by dis-
turbing thermal boundary layers, which in turn affects the overall
convective heat transfer rate. However, the effect of vibrations
induced by acoustic wave on heat transfer performance and the
corresponding mechanism, are not clear. It is therefore obvious
that this research area is still poorly addressed. To this end, for
both fundamental and applied studies, the future research direc-
tions have been indicated so as to cover this void in the field of heat
transfer enhancement within microchannels.
It is neither possible to acknowledge all work in the literature
nor cover in details all the micro-heat-transfer-enhancement tech-
nologies. So a general picture of the state-of-the-art is instead
drawn. An attempt is made to highlight the heat transfer perfor-
mance improvement mechanisms on the so far developed micro
heat exchangers. It is within the author’s hope that this review
contributes to an extended understanding of basic HTE mecha-
nisms, inspire novel equipment design or lead to expanded appli-
cations in this field. It is also hoped that future research
endeavors would lead to the establishment of comprehensive eval-
uation standard to measure the heat transfer performance instead
of relying on the heat transfer coefficient only. Thermal homogene-
ity (avoid the hotspot) and friction factor are also crucial criteria to
evaluate microscale heat transfer. Moreover, we also need to syn-
thetically consider the shape, the dimension, the medium as well
as the external stimulation for practical application in industry,
guiding the thermal control design of micro-electronic devices
and micro-satellites with lighter weight and better heat transfer
performance.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Acknowledgement
This paper is supported by the National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China (51606054, 51776057, 51576051) and NSAF (No.
U1830118). Zhang H N would like to thank the support of Open
Foundation Program of Key Laboratory of Efficient Utilization of
Low and Medium Grade Energy (Tianjin University) (No. 201806-
404). Li S N would like to thank the support of Ministry of Educa-
tion of China. The authors would like to thank the valuable discus-
sions with the members of Complex Flow and Heat Transfer Lab of
Harbin Institute of Technology.
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