Increased temperature of electronic devices during their performance results in the decline of their performance and reduces their lifetime due to the increased thermal damage, a problem which is very substantial in miniaturized electronic components. Here, we present an innovative, cost-efficient, simple, and environmentally benign chemical method for creating micro/nano roughened structure on the conventional aluminum heat sinks to increase their cooling capability. The surface structures of the roughened heat sinks were examined using scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. The performance of conventional and micro/nano roughened aluminum heat sinks was analyzed for thermal management of a printed circuit board (PCB) producing heat fluxes equivalent to those of a Core i7-1068NG7 processor. At forced air convection condition and under heat fluxes of 8000, 10,000 and 12,000 W/m2, the temperature of PCBs cooled with roughened heat sinks were found to be lower than those cooled with the conventional heat sinks by impressive values of 9.2 °C, 11.0 °C, and 12.8 °C, respectively. The thermal resistance of the novel heat sink decreased by 38.01%, 39.14%, and 39.96%, respectively, compared to that of the conventional heat sink. In free convection, employing the roughened heat sink improved the PCB cooling effectiveness by roughly 14% at heat fluxes of 8000 W/m2 at cutoff temperature. The proposed simple method in this study opens up the possibility of reducing the size (or mass) of aluminum heat sinks or employing a heat sink of a certain size for the thermal management of a system with higher heat flux.

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