New cooling techniques are being explored for the dissipation of heat fluxes. Many recent studies on heat transfer in micro/minichannels (M/MCs) with nanofluids have focused on combining the advantages of both, for the purpose of obtaining higher single-phase enhancement of heat transfer. Developing of many applications such as cooling electronic device, solar cell, and automotive technology is highly demanded now a day to obtain high efficiency and reduce the operating cost. This review article summarizes recent studies, with a focus on two main topics: The first part contains the main concepts such as scaling effects of M/MCs, physical properties and convective heat transfer. The second part displays the main recent applications of M/MCs with nanofluids with the challenges to be widely used. The purpose of this article to provide exhaustive and comprehensive review of updated works published in this new area, with general conclusions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.