The higher transistor densities and switching speeds accompanying the rapid migration of microelectronics into nanoelectronics have led to steep increases in heat flux and power dissipation. Without more aggressive thermal management techniques, nanoelectronic chips will have rising average temperatures and more local hot spots with sharp temperature gradients. These changes may result in accelerated failure rates and overall losses in IC reliability and performance. This lecture will begin with an overview of the industry roadmap for IC technology and a discussion of the primary thermally-driven failure mechanisms and future thermal management needs for nano-scaled semiconductor devices. Attention then will be turned to the "thermal frontier" associated with state-of-the-art electronic cooling techniques and the research required to address the challenges implicit in the commercialization of nanoelectronics.  Examples from research underway at the University of Maryland will be used to illustrate these points. Solid-state refrigeration, dielectric liquid pool boiling and spray cooling, two-phase microchannel coolers, and high performance heat sinks are among the techniques that will be discussed.

Avram Bar-Cohen is Professor and Chair of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland.  He earned his Ph.D. at MIT and began his career in industry at Raytheon and then Control Data. He has held academic positions at Ben Gurion University, MIT, the Naval Postgraduate School, and the University of Minnesota, and now continues his research in the thermal management of Micro/Nano systems at Maryland. He is the co-author of two important books on heat sinks and thermal control of electronics. He has co-edited 13 books in this field, has authored and co-authored some 250 refereed papers and book chapters, and has delivered nearly 50 invited lectures He currently is Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Components and Packaging Technologies. Prof. Bar-Cohen received the 2001 IEEE CPT Society Outstanding Sustained Technical Contributions Award and the 2000 ASME Worcester Reed Warner Medal. He also has been recognized with the ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award, the ASME Curriculum Innovation Award, the ASME/IEEE ITHERM Achievement Award, the ASME Edwin F. Church Medal, and the THERMI Award from the IEEE/Semi-Therm Conference. He is a Fellow of ASME and IEEE.