PREPARATION METHOD AND THERMAL PERFORMANCE OF A NEW ULTRA-THIN FLEXIBLE FLAT PLATE HEAT PIPE

Abstract

Ultra-thin flat plate heat pipes must provide a degree of flexibility to meet foldable electronics heat dissipation requirements. In this paper, a new flexible ultra-thin flat plate heat pipe with a thickness of 0.75 mm has been designed and fabricated. Compared with the traditional flexible ultra-thin flat heat pipes, the innovation lies in the flexible insulation section formed by epoxy resin pouring of the shell. The design of the shell ensures that the flexible ultra-thin plate heat pipe can respond quickly to the external temperature change, and also has good flexibility, which provides a new choice for the material and structure design of the flexible ultra-thin plate heat pipe shell. The gas-liquid coplanar type mesh is used as the capillary wick to reduce the flow resistance of steam inside the heat pipe, and the wick is hydrophilically modified to improve its capillary pumping performance; a sandwich support structure is used to prevent the steam chamber from collapsing. The thermal performance of the three liquid filling ratios of 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5 was tested at different tilt angles and bending angles. The results show that in the cases of filling ratios of 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5, the ultra-thin flexible flat plate heat pipe with the liquid filling ratio of 0.3 has the best heat transfer performance under different working conditions; the tilt angle has different effects on the heat transfer performance and starting speed of the ultra-thin flexible flat plate heat pipe with different filling ratios, and the bending angle changes the steam condensation position inside the ultra-thin flexible flat plate heat pipe and increases the thermal resistance.