Thermal performance of an ultra-thin flat heat pipe with striped super-hydrophilic wick structure

The development of high-performance electronic devices requires high heat transfer components with small thickness and high thermal performance. This paper presented an ultra-thin flat heat pipe (UTFHP), and the total thickness and inner height is respectively 0.68 mm and 0.48 mm. The striped-channel structure was developed to withdraw the deformation of UTFHP and reduce the flow resistance. In order to improve the capillary performance of mesh wick, the oxidation treatment was finished by the thermal oxidation method. The thermal performance of UTFHPs was investigated under natural convection cooling condition. The effects of mesh structure, passage width and filling ratio on the thermal resistance and temperature distribution were analyzed. It is found that the UTFHP with mesh number of N = 200 and passage width P = 1.5 mm showed the best thermal performance under the filling ratio of phi = 57%. The minimum thermal resistance was 0.26 K/W with a maximum temperature of 74.07 degrees C at 8 W heating load, indicating that the proposed UTFHP was able to be a reliable candidate for the thermal management of electronic devices with high heat transfer rates.

Automated summary

This paper presents an ultra-thin flat heat pipe (UTFHP) with small thickness and high thermal performance for the thermal management of high-performance electronic devices. The effects of fill ratio, mesh number, and passage width on the thermal resistance and temperature distribution of UTFHPs are analyzed, and the optimal thermal performance is achieved under specific conditions.