Heat pipe and VC

Heat pipes (Heatpipe) and Vapor Chamber (VC) are widely used in high-power or high-integration electronic products. When used properly, it can be simply understood as a component with a very high thermal conductivity. It is not difficult to understand that the heat pipe and VC can effectively eliminate the diffusion thermal resistance.

The most common application example of the heat pipe is to be embedded in the heat sink, and the heat of the chip is evenly distributed on the heat sink substrate or the fins. As shown in the lower left figure, when the heat emitted by the chip is transferred to the heat sink via the thermal interface material, the heat pipe can spread along the heat pipe with extremely low thermal resistance due to the extremely high thermal conductivity of the heat pipe. At this time, the heat pipe is connected to the fins of the radiator, and the heat can be more effectively lost to the air through the entire radiator. The picture on the lower right is a radiator with a heat pipe embedded in the substrate. When the chip heating area is relatively small, the direct transfer to the substrate of the heat sink will cause a large unevenness in the temperature distribution of the substrate. After the heat pipe is installed, due to the high thermal conductivity of the heat pipe, the temperature unevenness can be effectively relieved and the heat dissipation efficiency of the radiator can be improved.

Another application scenario for heat pipes is the efficient transfer of heat. This design is very common in notebooks. The specific design reason is: when the chip is hot, there is not enough space to install the heat sink, and in the other far away of the product, there is relevant space to install the heat dissipation strengthening component. At this time, you can use the heat pipe to transfer the heat emitted by the chip to a suitable space for heat dissipation.

The use of VC temperature equalizer is relatively simple, because the temperature equalizer cannot be bent flexibly like a heat pipe. But when the chip heat is very concentrated, the advantages of the temperature equalization board can be reflected. This is because the temperature equalizing plate is similar to a "flattened" heat pipe, which can evenly distribute the heat to the entire surface of the plate. In the design using a heat pipe inlaid substrate, those "blind areas" that are not covered by the heat pipe will still have a large diffusion thermal resistance.