Thermal Performance of Carbon Nanotube Enhanced Vapor Chamber Wicks

Vapor chambers are often used as spreaders to dissipate high heat fluxes by taking advantage of liquid-vapor phase change. Wicking of the working fluid in vapor chambers is accomplished through capillary action, which is strongly affected by the wick structure. Traditionally, copper meshes with micrometer-scale pore sizes have been used as wicking structures, but it is expected that heat fluxes in the next generation of high-power electronic devices will cause boiling in these devices and lead to dryout with conventional wick materials. With a goal of increasing maximum heat dissipation and reducing thermal resistance, a wick structure composed of both conventional copper mesh and carbon nanotubes has been developed and characterized. The high-permeability mesh provides for a low-resistance bulk flow path while the carbon nanotubes, with their high thermal conductivity and high surface area, modify the wick surface for enhanced capillary action. CNT-enhanced integrated wicks were fabricated by sintering a copper mesh on Cu-Mo-Cu substrates, on which CNTs were grown. A thin layer of copper was evaporated onto the CNTs to improve wicking and wettability with water, the working fluid of interest. Samples grown under varying degrees of positive bias voltage and varying thicknesses of post-CNT-growth copper evaporation were fabricated, so that the surface morphology of the samples could be varied. The resultant boiling curves and associated wick thermal resistances indicate that micro/nano integrated wicks fabricated with higher positive bias voltages during CNT synthesis, and thicker copper coatings, lead to improved thermal performance and lower wick thermal resistance. Notably, heat fluxes at the heater surface of greater than 500 W/cm² were observed without reaching a critical heat flux condition.