A Novel Thermal Mapping Technique using Nano-confinement Assisted Quantum Dots for Transient Cooling Applications

During air or liquid cooling, thermal resistance of the devices is measured precisely from the thermal information at the junction. But existing thermal measurement technologies fall short because of highly transient events such as unstable vortex formation (air cooling) and bubble growth (two-phase liquid cooling). In solving this problem, this paper reports a novel and low-cost thermal mapping technique that can capture highly spatio-temporal temperature evolution at the solid-liquid interface. Essentially, a robust interface is fabricated with CuInS 2 /ZnS Quantum dots (λ peak = 550 nm and 750 nm) trapped inside nanopores (20 nm-30 nm) of a ceramic membrane (50 µm) and/or everyday use paper. It is observed that such nanoconfinement assisted Quantum dots provided sustained thermal photoluminescence coefficient (-0.1 nm/°C) at high number of heating-cooling cycle. This unique yet low cost thermal mapping technique is applied to capture thermal evolution during micro-droplet impingement cooling and hemiwicking flows through anisotropic wicks which showcase commendable spatio-temporal benefits.