Application of Miniature Heat Pipe for Notebook PC Cooling

Abstract

Miniature heat pipe(MHP) with woven-wired wick was used to cool the CPU of a notebook PC. The pipe with circular cross-section was pressed and bent for packaging the MHP into a notebook PC with very limited compact packaging space. A cross-sectional area of the pipe is reduced about 30% as the MHP with 4mm diameter is pressed to 2mm thickness. In the present study a performance test has been performed in order to review varying of operating performance according to pressed thickness variation and heat dissipation capacity of MHP cooling module that is packaged on a notebook PC. New wick type was considered for overcoming low heat transfer limit when MHP is pressed to thin-plate. The limiting thickness or pressing is shown to be within the range of 2mm∼2.5mm through the performance test with varying the pressing thickness. When the wall thickness of 0.4mm is reduced to 0.25mm for minimizing conductive thermal resistance through the wall of heat pipe, heat transfer limit and thermal resistance of MHP were improved about 10%. In the meantime, it is shown that the thermal resistance and heat transfer limit for the MHP with central wick type are higher than those of MHP with existing wick types. The results of performance test for MHP cooling modules with woven-wired wick to cool a notebook PC shows the stability as cooling system since T(sub)j(Temperature of Processor Junction) satisfy a demand condition of 0∼100 under 11.5W of CPU heat.