TYPES, ADVANTAGES AND PROPERTIES OF THE VAPOR CHAMBER

Vapor chamber works on the same principle as heat pipe. They have a vacuum sealed metal shell, an internal core structure attached to the inner wall, and use capillary action to move the liquid around the system. In most cases, the performance of vapor chamber is better than that of heat pipe.

As shown in the figure above, vapor chamber can be used to disperse heat to the local condenser or transfer it to the remote condenser.

The general advantages of vapor chamber compared with heat pipe include:

Vapor chamber is usually in direct contact with the heat source, which can reduce the total thermal resistance and improve the performance. The heat pipe, especially the round heat pipe, has a base plate between the heat source and the heat pipe.

Due to the large area of vapor chamber, it can better realize the isothermal property under the chip and reduce the hot spots. They can be extended beyond the width of the heat source to achieve greater performance advantages than heat pipes.

To sum up, the performance of vapor chamber is 15-30% better than that of heat pipe.

Low cost vapor chamber: integrated steam chamber.

Large diameter pipe, different density and porosity formula are used, and the wick structure is connected with the inner wall. A wafer thin microporous spacer is then inserted to help the steam flow and increase the structural stiffness. As with all two-phase devices, when liquid is added, the device is vacuum sealed. The process does not require stamping or machining, reducing the number of secondary operations and reducing the cost to near parity with the heat pipe solution.

The goal is to significantly reduce the cost of the traditional two-piece vapor chamber design while maintaining thermal performance characteristics and adding some unique features. This type is used for high-performance heat sink video card, DRAM memory module, and notebook computer. It has advantages over heat pipe.

Multifunctional two-piece vapor chamber:

Most vapor chamber manufacturers use the traditional two-piece design. Although studies have shown that the performance of a heat sink using a Vapor Chamber can be increased by 15-30% compared to a heat sink using a heat pipe, the cost of a two-piece design has a large impact. As a result, their use has always been limited to high power density and / or other applications where demand is greater than cost.

The figure below shows a 25 mm thick T-shaped vapor chamber that provides an isothermal surface for mounting multiple heating components.