HEAT TRANSFER ENHANCEMENT IN VAPOR CHAMBER HEAT SINKS

The increasing development of electronic devices, including portable electronic devices as laptop, tablet and smartphones, has led to enhance processors performance thus capable of delivering higher powers in even narrow and restricted spaces. The direct consequence concerns hot-spot formation, threatening to deteriorate processor reliability and lifespan. The miniaturization of such electronic devices gives rise to effective cooling and heat spreading system capable of dissipating heat fluxes progressively higher. For this purpose, vapor chambers display an efficacious solution as heat spreader. Similarly to heat pipes, vapor chambers are passive thermal devices that uses phase change process to minimize thermal conductivity, achieving excellent results when compared with traditional cooling system. The present work provides a 2D comprehensive numerical model of a vapor chamber in steady-state conditions. The investigated model solves mass, momentum and energy conservation in vapor, saturated wick and external casing. The vapor is treated as a compressible fluid following ideal gas law. The obtained results reveal an optimal behavior with the modeled physics and strong agreement with recent literature. Lastly, a parametric sensitivity analysis was conducted to verify model accuracy and to investigate critical parameter in operating conditions.