Physics-Informed Neural Networks for Advanced Thermal Management in Electronics and Battery Systems: A Review of Recent Developments and Future Prospects

The growing complexities, power densities, and cooling demands of modern electronic systems and batteries—such as three-dimensional integrated circuit chip packaging, printed circuit board assemblies, and electronics enclosures—have pushed the urgency for efficient and dynamic thermal management strategies. Traditional numerical methods like computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and the finite element method (FEM) are computationally impractical for large-scale or real-time thermal analysis, especially when dealing with complex geometries, temperature-dependent material properties, and rapidly changing boundary conditions. These approaches typically require extensive meshing and repeated simulations for each new scenario, making them inefficient for design exploration or optimization tasks. Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) emerge as a powerful alternative approach that incorporates physical principles such as mass and energy conservation equations into deep learning models. This approach delivers rapid and adaptable resolutions to the partial differential equations that govern heat transfer and fluid dynamics. This review examines the basic principle of PINN and its role in thermal management for electronics and batteries, from the small unit scale to the system scale. We highlight recent advancements in PINNs, particularly their superior performance compared to traditional CFD methods. For example, studies have shown that PINNs can be up to 300,000 times faster than conventional CFD solvers, with temperature prediction differences of less than 0.1 K in chip thermal models. Beyond speed, we explore the potential of PINNs in enabling efficient design space exploration and predicting outcomes for previously unseen scenarios. However, challenges such as training convergence in fine-grained or large-scale applications remain. Notably, research combining PINNs with LSTM networks for battery thermal management at a 2.0 C charging rate has achieved impressive results—an R2 of 0.9863, a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.2875 °C, and a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.3306 °C—demonstrating high predictive accuracy. Finally, we propose future research directions that emphasize the integration of PINNs with advanced hardware and hybrid modeling techniques to advance thermal management solutions for next-generation electronics and battery systems.