Project description
Physics-informed AI for extreme electronics cooling
Next-generation AI hardware faces a severe thermal crisis, with heat fluxes exceeding 1 kW/cm2 and overheating causing over 55 % of electronics failures. Two-phase immersion cooling offers a promising solution through boiling heat transfer, but its dominant local mechanism (microlayer evaporation) remains poorly understood due to sub-micrometre scales and rapid timescales. Current experimental techniques cannot resolve steep temperature gradients or measure hidden pressure fields, especially in high-density bubble environments where optical paths are obstructed. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the MICRO-PINN project will develop a physics-informed neural network framework. This framework will be designed to reconstruct complete 4D velocity, pressure, and temperature fields from sparse experimental data, advancing the understanding and optimisation of next-generation electronics cooling technologies.
Objective
The relentless miniaturisation of transistors and the shift towards 3D integrated circuits have created an unprecedented thermal management crisis. Heat fluxes in next-generation AI hardware and data centres exceed 1kW/cm², with over 55% of electronics failures attributed to overheating. Two-phase immersion cooling, where components are submerged in dielectric fluids to exploit boiling heat transfer, emerges as the most promising solution, achieving heat transfer coefficients up to 100 kW/m²·K, three orders of magnitude higher than air cooling. This proposal aims to fundamentally investigate the intricate transport phenomena governing boiling, with a particular focus on microlayer evaporation beneath the bubbles, a local mechanism that can dominate interfacial heat flux but whose quantitative role remains uncertain because it occurs at sub-micrometre length scales and evolves on short timescales. Advanced experimental techniques have enabled simultaneous measurement of temperature, velocity, and heat flux distributions during bubble nucleation. However, the spatial resolution of current systems is insufficient to capture steep temperature gradients at the bubble interface, and are fundamentally limited to single-bubble or low bubble density studies due to optical path obstruction by multiple growing bubbles. The pressure field governing interfacial forces cannot be measured directly from the experiments. This leaves critical physical quantities “hidden” to experiment. The MICRO-PINN project will develop a Physics-Informed Neural Network framework that reconstructs complete 4-dimensional velocity, pressure, and temperature fields from sparse experimental data. The goal is to generate new physical insights and engineering guidelines for the design and optimisation of next-generation immersion cooling systems. This project will contribute to SDG-7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), SDG-9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure), and SDG-13 (Climate Action).
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology environmental engineering energy and fuels renewable energy
- engineering and technology mechanical engineering thermodynamic engineering heat engineering
- natural sciences computer and information sciences artificial intelligence computational intelligence
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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SW7 2AZ London
United Kingdom
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