Modeling and experimental analysis of an internally-cooled vapor chamber

Abstract

In recent years, hotspots have become fatal obstacles that prevent chips from normal operation due to the ever-increasing heat flux of the supercomputers. In order to reduce the probability of hotspots and extend the lifetime of chips, the internally-cooled vapor chamber (ICVC) is designed and fabricated to improve the temperature uniformity. Besides, the mathematical and numerical models of the ICVC are built, respectively. The ICVC is featured with a co-designing of liquid cooling and vapor chamber, which can provide more efficient thermal management under high heat flux. The double-layered liquid cooling pipe is embedded in the vapor chamber, where two heat transfer ways of phase change and single-phase are coordinated. The effects of coolant flow rate and heat flux on various thermal parameters, including temperature uniformity, thermal response, thermal resistance, and pressure drop, are experimentally studied. The experimental and simulation temperature distribution and pressure drop are compared. The results show that the ICVC can yield a superior advantage in terms of temperature uniformity, and the minimum total thermal resistance of ICVC can be decreased to 0.044 K/W. Additionally, compared with other related research, the ICVC is more suitable and promising for the thermal management of devices that require low thermal resistance and good temperature uniformity under high heat flux.