Custom Vapor Chamber Heat Sinks

Vapor chambers are extremely efficient conductors of heat. The effective thermal conductivity of the vapor chamber is tens or even hundreds of times that of pure copper. Radiators with a vapor chamber base not only outperform copper and aluminum radiators, but outperform heat pipe radiators by 10-30%. A 10-30% reduction in thermal resistance can translate to a 3-10 degree reduction in critical component temperatures. Many studies have shown that vapor chamber heat sinks can significantly improve the heat dissipation of high-power CPUs, GPUs, LEDs, IGBTs, MOSFETs, and laser diodes. The picture shows that under the same test conditions (ambient temperature, heat sink size, airflow rate, power consumption, etc.), a vapor chamber based heat sink can reduce the thermal resistance of an aluminum heat sink by 30% or that of a copper heat sink by 20% , the temperature distribution is more uniform. When your equipment requires next-level cooling and performance, when you consider the next level of cooling and performance, a vapor chamber should be your choice.

What is a vapor chamber and why should I used it?

The ultra-high thermal conductivity is achieved by a closed-loop vaporization and condensation process. Due to the low pressure inside the vapor chamber, the fluid boils at a temperature much lower than its atmospheric-pressure boiling point. Unlike thermal conduction by atomic vibration and collision inside metals, vapor can scatter and move quickly to the entire chamber, carry heat away from hot spots and condenses at cooler places and release heat there. The condensed liquid is driven back to the hot spots by capillary forces inside the wick to close the loop. A sealed copper chamber (with an upper and a lower lids) working fluid. Wick materials. Sintered copper block. Water boils inside the chamber and turns into a gas, which can quickly travel from the hot spot to cooler sections of the chamber, where the gas in condensed to water and lease the (latent) heat. Vapor chamber usually are in direct contact with the het source, decreasing total thermal resistance and improving performance. Heat pipes, especially round ones, require a mounting plate between the heat source and the heat pipes. Due to their large, continuous surface area, vapor chamber solutions allow better isothermalization at the chip interface, reducing hot spots. They can be extended beyond the widht of the heat source, allowing further performance benefits versus their heat pipe counterparts Vapor chambers, as their name suggests, has a substantially larger chamber than heat pipes, allowing more fluid to move freely and carry more heat away faster, with a much larger surface area. There two factors combine to allow vapor chamber solutions to outperform heat pipe solution by 15-30%. Depending on the application, this typically translates to between 3-10 degC celsius improvement in overall heat sink delta-T. Less noise. Keeping temperature low.

When should I use vapor chambers?

Vapor chamber heat sinks are not expensive. When massively produced (quantity over 2000 pcs), the unit cost of a vapor chamber is comparable to the cost of a full copper heat sink. The factor that has stopped many people in using this highly efficient solution is that, for every custom-designed vapor chamber, there is a one-time tooling cost. Depending on the size of the vapor chamber, this cost can arrange from $3,000 to $20,000. Because of this, vapor chamber heat sinks are usually used in high-quantity products where the tooling cost can be justified, or on the components crucial to the system, If the tooling cost is not a big concern, vapor chambers will be the best choice when the following conditions are met. Vapor chambers are best suited for dissipating heat from a small heat source over a large area. Vapor chambers are best suited for components with high heat densities, with TDP (thermal design power) from 100 to 1000 Watts. Small size device (heat source) and large heat sinks. Small heat sources dissipated over a larger area. Harsh environments such as computers and data centers, telecommunications, aerospace, transportation.

How do I calculate the performance of a vapor chamber?

Modeling the physics inside a vapor chamber is complex and difficult. It is widely accepted to use effective thermal conductivity to model a vapor chamber. At MHS, we have been using 20,000 W/m-K as the effective thermal conductivity and find in the thermal resistance calculated by model is very close to the measured data. Keep in mind vapor chamber doe not dissipate heat to the environment, but serve to move heat efficiently within a thermal system. A robust requires robust heat sink. Optimization.