Introduction

The popularity of compact electronic gadgets in the consumer market has continued to spiral in the last few decades. From the way the electronic industry has progressed, it is quite evident that Moore and Michio Kaku were somewhat clairvoyant about future challenges in electronic cooling. The cooling load has to balance the heat generated within the component to maintain the whole device at a constant temperature. Later heat sinks with fins captivated the field with the possibility of dissipating more heat into the surroundings. A major breakthrough in electronic cooling took place when phase change materials (PCM)-based heat sinks that exploit high latent heat entered the field. In PCM, whenever the material changes either from solid to liquid or liquid to gas phase, there is a transfer of energy as material changes its phase from either solid to liquid or liquid to solid. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.