High performance vapor chamber enabled by leaf-vein-inspired wick structure for high-power electronics cooling

Abstract

The boom of the advanced technologies, such as microprocessors, 5G, and big data, has led the thermal management to be a crucial factor in determining the operating speed, reliability, and efficiency as well as lifetime of electronic devices. As passive heat transfer devices utilizing the liquid–vapor phase change, vapor chambers are greatly attractive due to the high thermal conductivity and passive operation. Here, we present a novel vapor chamber with leaf-vein-inspired wick structure, which could effectively facilitate the condensate to flow back to the evaporation region. Besides, the capillary wick functioned as the supporting structure instead of traditional solid supporting columns to withdraw the deformation of the vapor chamber. The heat transfer performance of the proposed vapor chamber was experimentally investigated under forced water cooling condition, and the effects of the cooling water temperature and mass flow rate were analyzed systematically. The results showed that the vapor chamber could effectively tolerate a wide heat load range from 20 W to 500 W with no noticeable performance degradation, and a minimum thermal resistance of 0.029 °C/W was attained at 200 W. Additionally, increasing the cooling water temperature and decreasing the cooling water mass flow rate could lead to the increase of the total thermal resistance at all heat loads. Finally, compared to other reported works, the vapor chamber featured a lowest thickness and vapor chamber thermal resistance, demonstrating a promising solution for cooling high-power and miniaturized electronics.