Evaluation of the thermal and hydraulic performances of a very thin sintered copper flat heat pipe for 3D microsystem packages

Abstract: The reported research work presents numerical studies validated by experimental results of a flat micro heat pipe with sintered copper wick structure. The objectives of this project are to produce and demonstrate the efficiency of the passive cooling technology (heat pipe) integrated in a very thin electronic substrate that is a part of a multifunctional 3-D electronic package. The enhanced technology is dedicated to the thermal management of high dissipative microsystems having heat densities of more than 10W/cm2. Future applications are envisaged in the avionics sector. In this research 2D numerical hydraulic model has been developed to investigate the performance of a very thin flat micro heat pipe with sintered copper wick structure, using water as a refrigerant. Finite difference method has been used to develop the model. The model has been used to determine the mass transfer and fluid flow in order to evaluate the limits of heat transport capacity as functions of the dimensions of the wick and the vapour space and for various copper spheres radii. The results are presented in terms of liquid and vapour pressures within the heat pipe. The simulated results are validated by experiments and proved that the method can be further used to predict thermal performance of the heat pipe and to optimise its design.