Overview of Single-phase Immersion Liquid Cooling Technology

Abstract

With the rapid advancement of high-performance computing technologies such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing, data centers face dual pressures: surging chip thermal density and the imperative to reduce energy consumption and emissions. Traditional air cooling technologies, constrained by their physical limitations, struggle to meet increasingly stringent thermal management demands, making liquid cooling an inevitable choice. This paper focuses on outlining single-phase immersion liquid cooling technology. This approach achieves efficient heat dissipation by directly immersing heat-generating electronic components in an insulating coolant, leveraging the liquid's high thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity. Compared to phase-change immersion cooling and indirect liquid cooling, single-phase immersion eliminates interfacial thermal resistance, shortens heat transfer paths, and handles extremely high heat flux densities. It also offers comprehensive advantages including simplified system architecture, lower initial investment and operational costs, reduced noise, and high space utilization. Analysis indicates this technology significantly reduces data center energy consumption, bringing Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) close to theoretical limits. It represents a critical technological pathway for enabling green, high-density, and sustainable data center development.