KAIST Researchers Develop Ultra-High-Efficiency Liquid Cooling for Semiconductor Chips

A research team at KAIST has developed a manifold microchannel cooling technology that embeds liquid channels directly into silicon chips to manage extreme heat. This innovation achieves a coefficient of performance ten times higher than previous records, maintaining chip temperatures below 100°C even under heat loads exceeding 2,000 watts per square centimeter. As AI and high-performance computing push conventional air-cooling systems to their limits, this breakthrough offers a scalable solution to reduce energy consumption and alleviate thermal bottlenecks in next-generation data centers.

Led by Professors Sung Jin Kim and Ikjin Lee, the joint research team from KAIST’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and the School of AI and Computing successfully integrated microscopic fluid channels thinner than a human hair into silicon semiconductor chips. Unlike conventional microchannel designs where coolant travels long distances—increasing flow resistance and pumping power—the team’s manifold structure utilizes multiple inlets and outlets to distribute room-temperature water more uniformly. This logistics-inspired approach significantly reduces pumping pressure requirements while ensuring a consistent temperature distribution across the entire device, even under extreme heat-generation conditions exceeding 2,000 watts per square centimeter.

The technical breakthrough centers on a multi-fidelity optimization framework that refined the channel width, height, and arrangement to maximize cooling while minimizing energy loss. The resulting system achieved a coefficient of performance (COP) of 106,000, which is approximately ten times higher than the previous world record of 10,000 reported in Nature in 2020. Notably, the researchers achieved these results using ordinary room-temperature water without the need for phase-change cooling, nanoscale surface modifications, or expensive materials like diamond, proving that high-efficiency thermal management can be attained through structural optimization alone.

For the semiconductor industry, the most significant implication is the technology's compatibility with existing manufacturing infrastructures. The fabrication process occurs at temperatures below 350°C, allowing it to be implemented in standard foundries without requiring major equipment investments. This makes the technology a viable candidate for cooling AI accelerators, 3D semiconductor packaging, and defense electronics. By requiring only one-tenth of the pumping power of previous systems to remove the same amount of heat, this cooling solution addresses the growing energy and infrastructure constraints facing modern high-performance computing systems.