Interface engineering to enhance thermal contact conductance of evaporators in miniature loop heat pipe systems

While miniature loop heat pipes (mLHP) have significant potential for electronic cooling, they are only used in a narrow niche of applications, such as space or military. Complicated fabrication and system integration leading to high cost devices are the main culprit. To this end, this paper explores a low-cost sintering method for fabricating evaporators for mLHP that have increased heat transfer performance. Through this method, the porous wick of the evaporator is fabricated to partially fill the vapor collection channels embedded in the base plate of the evaporator. The sintering method employs an organic material used to define the vapor collection channels, which is sublimated at the end of the sintering process. Interpenetrating these two, otherwise distinctive, parts of the evaporator results in an increased contact area and thermal conductance. The heat transfer performance of an mLHP employing the new evaporator is compared to that of a system using a standard evaporator configuration, where the porous wick is rested against a flat base plate. It is found that the thermal contact conductance increases about 25%, depending on the applied heat load, while the total thermal resistance of the mLHP with the new evaporator decreases approximately by a factor of two. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.