Feature: Thermal management


hardware, the manufacturing technologies behind these supporting components are becoming increasingly important. Among these technologies, etched


heat exchangers represent a particularly interesting example. Teir ability to deliver high thermal performance in a compact footprint makes them increasingly attractive for demanding applications, but their performance depends heavily on the precision manufacturing processes used to make them.


Precision chemical etching and AI cooling Understanding the importance of chemical etching requires understanding the role of heat exchangers within a liquid cooling system. At the server level, cold plates are


mounted directly onto heat-generating components such as GPUs and processors. Tese cold plates absorb thermal energy and transfer it into a secondary coolant loop. Tat coolant then travels to a CDU, where heat is transferred between the server-side cooling circuit and the facility- side cooling infrastructure. Stacked and bonded flow plates can


be used within this wider thermal management architecture as highly efficient liquid-to-liquid heat exchangers. Teir compact design and high surface- area-to-volume ratio allow them to transfer significant amounts of heat while occupying considerably less space than many conventional heat exchanger technologies. However, achieving this performance


depends on the geometry of the internal channels through which fluids flow. Tese channels must be produced with extremely high dimensional accuracy across large areas of material, while maintaining consistency from one component to the next. Unlike machining processes that


remove material mechanically through cutting tools, photochemical etching uses a precisely created phototool and chemical process to selectively remove material from a metal sheet. Complex channel patterns can be produced


Tool wear,


mechanical stresses and cumulative dimensional variation can all create challenges when


producing complex microchannel structures through traditional


manufacturing methods


simultaneously across the entire surface of the component, allowing manufacturers to create intricate geometries whilst maintaining tight tolerances. Te process is particularly suited to


flow plate production, because it avoids many of the limitations associated with conventional manufacturing approaches. Tool wear, mechanical stresses and cumulative dimensional variation can all create challenges when producing complex microchannel structures through traditional methods. Chemical etching eliminates many of


these constraints by forming the entire pattern in a single controlled process step. For AI infrastructure, this distinction matters. As thermal demands increase, the requirement is not simply for more heat exchangers, it’s for heat exchangers manufactured with the precision, repeatability and reliability required to achieve continuous operation.


The process behind precision performance The performance of a heat exchanger begins with the manufacturing process used to create its internal structures. Thin metal sheets are coated with a photoresist material before a precisely produced phototool defines the areas


38 September 2026 www.electronicsworld.co.uk


that will remain protected during chemical etching. The exposed material is then selectively removed, creating the channels and features required for the finished plate. Because the entire pattern is


transferred across the material simultaneously, chemical etching provides a significant advantage when producing complex geometries at scale. Feature accuracy does not deteriorate as component complexity increases, making the process particularly suited to applications where thousands of channels must be produced consistently across large-format plates. Unlike machining processes, chemical


etching is a non-contact manufacturing method. The material experiences no mechanical cutting forces, reducing the risk of distortion, stress introduction or damage to delicate features during production. The result is a process capable of producing highly complex components from difficult-to-machine materials, including stainless steel, titanium and nickel-based alloys, while maintaining repeatability across high- volume production. For thermal management applications,


the value of chemical etching is therefore not simply that it can create small features. It’s that it can create those features consistently, across thousands of components, whilst maintaining the dimensional accuracy required for demanding operating environments.


Key enabling technology Precision chemical etching is a key enabling technology in the process of moving onto more demanding AI systems. Thus, the challenge facing engineers and procurement teams will extend beyond designing higher- performance cooling solutions. It will also involve ensuring that the manufacturing processes behind those solutions have the supply chain resilience to support deployment at scale. So, the hidden challenge behind AI


cooling may ultimately not be the ability to engineer new thermal architectures, but one of manufacturing capacity.


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