Abstract

Objective: Phase-change heat transfer enhancement is of critical importance to meet high cooling demands.

Method: Recently, surface engineering (surface structuring) has emerged as a promising heat transfer enhancement method, especially with the development of nanotechnology. Surface parameters such as wettability, surface roughness and porosity are modified by surface engineering.

Aims: This work aims to discuss the parametric effects of wettability, surface roughness and porosity on pool boiling heat transfer performance by selecting several promising micro/nanoscale enhancement techniques as examples.

Conclusion: More efforts are needed as phase-change phenomena on micro/ nanostructures are complicated due to the multiscales of the engineered micro/ nanostructures and the length-scales of the bubble dynamics.

Keywords: Heat transfer, micro/nanostructure, pool boiling, porosity, roughness, wettability.

Graphical Abstract