Air Cooling of High-Heat-Flux Electronics Using Wettability-Engineered Vapor Chambers

The rapidly rising use of highly dense electronics in modern digital installations -ranging from data centers to power electronics- fuels the need for development of better, reliable, yet sustainable and low-energy-use cooling solutions. Air cooling, while highly reliable and conventionally used in most industrial scenarios, lacks the capacity to remove high heat fluxes frequently observed in modern integrated technology (O(~1 kW/cm2)). While recent scientific exploits explore the capabilities of phase-change heat transfer or direct cooling of hotspots on chips, these improvised thermal management devices often lack fast integrability into standardized industrial norms. Novel strategies in thermal management -like vapor chambers, thermosyphons, and oscillating heat pipes- transport heat from one place to another or spread heat over a wider area, often reducing high fluxes, allowing traditional methods to perform better and handle higher heat loads. Recent research investigations in vapor chambers have reported manufacturing of laser-textured wickless components, allowing these systems to become thinner without loss of performance, be lightweight, and rapidly dissipate high heat fluxes. In a novel attempt, this work highlights the use of wickless vapor chambers in cooling of high-heat-flux power electronics components being switched at high frequencies. Contrary to other methods proposed in recent literature, wickless vapor chambers with optimized microstructures can handle high heat fluxes (~400 W/cm2), dissipating the entire heat load via simple air cooling. The developed vapor chambers are characterized for their performance at different heat loads and working-fluid charging ratios. Furthermore, a numerical method is implemented to accurately predict in-plane thermal conductivities of such VCs when the temperature difference on the condenser is low. The combination of experiments and modeling with surface modifications in this work offers an example of how the operational range of air cooling can be extended beyond the reach of conventional (wick-lined) vapor-chamber heat spreaders.

Author dc:creator

• Arani Mukhopadhyay (18296578)

• Engineering, Mechanical
• Engineering, Electronics and Electrical
• Engineering, Materials Science

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

DOI dc:identifier

https://doi.org/10.25417/uic.32991920.v1

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:figshare.com:article/32991920