Thermal performance of miniature loop heat pipe operating under different heating modes

In the new generation microprocessors, it is observed that the power density over the active surface can vary from uniform to non uniform modes depending on the clock speed and the processing load on the chipset. The latter mode of operation can result in hot spots on the microprocessors that can result in the increase of the local temperature above the permissible limit and ultimately in the failure of the electronic device. In order to propose a solution for this problem a miniature loop heat pipe (mLHP) with the flat disk shaped evaporator, 30 mm in diameter and 10 mm thick, was developed. The proposed mLHP was tested under uniformly as well as non-uniformly heating mode. In the uniform heating, the entire active area of the evaporator was heated while in the non-uniform mode only 14% of the evaporator active area was heated locally. The thermal performance of the mLHP under these heating modes was compared on the basis of the evaporator wall temperature and thermal resistance between different loop components. The results of the experiment help to classify mLHP as the viable thermal solution for the cooling of microprocessors with local hot spots and non-uniform heating patterns