Tag Archives: Vapor Chamber

New Qpedia Thermal eMagazine Published!

Qpedia Thermal eMagazine, Volume 6, Issue 11, has just been released and can be downloaded at: http://www.qats.com/Qpedia-Thermal-eMagazine/Back-Issues. Featured articles in this month’s issue include:

Honeycomb Heat Sinks for LEDs

LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, are a form of solid-state lighting. An LED light is often made of a small piece of semiconductor, an integrated optical lens used to shape its radiation pattern, and a heat sink, used to dissipate heat and maintain the semiconductor at low operating temperature. LED lights present many advantages over incandescent light sources, including lower energy consumption, longer lifetime, improved physical robustness, smaller size and faster switching. This article examines Ma et al’s  findings with respect to the honeycomb heat sink design employed in LEDs, which has proven to be highly efficient.

Characteristics of Thermosyphons in Thermal Management

With the increase of heat fluxes and shrinking chip sizes in electronics applications, there is a need to spread the heat from the small chip to the larger heat sink or to transport the heat to a location where there is ample space to remove the heat. Heat pipes, vapor chambers and thermosyphons have been introduced to undertake this task and, in this article, we focus on some aspects of the design of thermosyphons. The advantage of thermosyphons is that they have no capillary limit and can transport large amounts of heat over long distances.

Industry Developments: Heat Pipes Providing High Performance

Heat pipes are increasing in type and use for the benefits they provide. Because of their lower total thermal resistance, heat pipes transfer heat more efficiently and evenly than solid aluminum or copper. Heat pipes contain a small quantity of working fluid (e.g. water, acetone, nitrogen, methanol, ammonia). Learn the conclusions of a recent study that focused on the best working fluid and another study of heat pipes in outer space.

Technology Review: Cold Plates, 2010 to 2012

Qpedia continues its review of technologies developed for electronics cooling applications. We are presenting selected patents that were awarded to developers around the world to address cooling challenges. After reading the series, you will be more aware of both the historic developments and the latest breakthroughs in both product design and applications.

Cooling News featuring the latest product releases and buzz from around the electronics cooling industry.

Download the issue now.

Not a Qpedia subscriber? Subscribe Now for free at: http://www.qats.com/Qpedia-Thermal-eMagazine/Subscribe-to-Qpedia and see why over 18,000 engineers read Qpedia.

Vapor Chambers for Thermal Management: A Primer by Thermacore

Thermacore Vapor Chamber Heat Sink Thermacore’s Matt Connors has written up a nice primer on Vapor Chamber technology that’s well worth a read over at Design World Magazine. Among the points he notes:

  • Surface area alone is not enough with highly concentrated heat sources such as high-power electronic components. As the electronic components get smaller and the heat sinks base area increases, a large thermal heat spreading penalty is typically found in the base of the heat sink [ATS: meaning? you can only make a heat sink so big before it doesn’t work efficiently with concentrated heat sources]
  • To stay within the existing heat sink form factor and to reduce the thermal resistance of the larger base, the heat sink’s standard metallic base needs to be replaced with a conducting material. A vapor chamber can be used as the medium to spread heat in the base more efficiently.
  • Vapor chambers are essentially flat or planar heat pipes that use the principles of evaporation and condensation to produce a very high conductivity thermal plane. Vapor chambers are basically evacuated vessels with an internal wick and a working fluid. The wick helps transport the working fluid back to the evaporator surface without using moving parts. Once the fluid evaporates, it travels to the cooler section of the chamber, condenses in the wick, and the cycle continues.

Matt’s got some other choice words as well and his article is a great primer on this topic for our readers.

As Matt notes, vapor chambers are really flat heat pipes.ATS has some resources that can provide you some breadth of information to go with Thermacore’s primer, here’s three ATS Technical White Papers, all for free: