INTRODUCTION Currently complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) chip technologies act as the major class of integrated circuits and are widely applied in microprocessors@ microcontrollers@ static random-access memory (RAM)@ and other digital logic circuits. With the ongoing rise of capability@ there is a strong demand for cooling to ensure the performance of microprocessors@ microcontrollers@ static RAM@ and other digital logic circuits. In particular@ it is known that the performance of CMOS can be drastically improved if the temperature can be further reduced. There are many advantages (Ghibaudo et al. 1992)@ e.g.@ higher carrier mobility@ higher saturation velocity@ better turn-on capabilities (sub-threshold slope)@ latch-up immunity@ improved reliability due to activated degradation processes@ reduced power consumption@ a decrease in leakage currents@ a lowering of interconnection resistance@ increased thermal conductivity@ and a reduction of thermal noise@ in addition to the low temperature operation. Moreover@ it is well known that operating semiconductor devices at lower temperatures leads to conspicuously improved performance (Taut et al. 1997). This is because of faster switching times of semiconductor devices and increased circuit speeds due to lower electrical resistance of interconnecting materials at low-temperature operations (Balestra and Ghibaudo 1994). Depending on the doping characteristics@ attainable performance improvements range from 1% to 3% for every 10??(50?? lower transistor temperature (Phelan 2001). However@ in addition to the physical limit of shrinking the size of the integrated circuit@ the accompanied heat generation becomes more and more difficult to manage. In fact@ advanced electronic products all suffer from the rapid rise of cooling demand. Although conventional air cooling still dominates the cooling solutions@ it suffers problems such as noise and lower heat transfer performance; hence@ alternatives such as heat pipes@ liquid immersion@ jet impingement and sprays@ thermoelectrics@ and refrigeration (Trutassanawin et al. 2006) must be considered. Of the available alternatives@ only thermoelectrics and refrigeration can provide a sub-ambient operation that is quite attractive for high-flux applications. In practice@ refrigeration is capable of operating at a high-temperature ambient@ yet its coefficient of performance (COP) is well above the present thermoelectrics system. There are also other advantages for exploiting refrigeration cooling (Taut et al. 1997)@ such as maintenance of low junction temperatures while dissipating high heat fluxes@ potential increases in microprocessor performance at lower operating temperatures@ and increased chip reliability. Investigations reported for cooling of electronic devices via refrigeration were mainly related to the fundamental system performance@ such as junction to ambient air thermal resistance@ system COP of the refrigeration system (Phelan and Swanson 2004)@ and transient response behavior (Nnann 2006). Some refrigeration cooling systems for electronics are already available (e.g.@ see Schmidt and Notohardjono [2002]@ Thermaltake [2009]@ and Bash et al. [2002]). However@ as pointed out by Agwu Nnanna (2006)@ there are two major concerns when using refrigeration systems to cool electronics. The first is associated with the condensation on the surfaces subject to sub-ambient operation@ and the second is the system's lagging response to applied load at the evaporator. Note that condensation takes place when the temperature is below the dew-point temperature of the surrounding air. The presence of water condensate can bring hazards to the electronic system and must be avoided at all times. Typical solutions may involve clumsy insulation or use an additional heater to vaporize condensate outside the cold plate (Asetek 2009). The former requires considerable space that is often quite limited in practice and is apt to reduce the overall system performance due to blockage of the airflow. The latter design not only raises problems in control but also incurs additional energy consumption. In view of the shortcomings of these two common solutions@ the present study offers a novel design to entirely eradicate the influence of condensate. Performance of the proposed concept is then compared with the conventional cold plate.