Miniature loop heat pipes for electronics cooling

The paper is devoted to the development of miniature loop heat pipes (mLHPs) with a nominal capacity of 25–30 W and a heat-transfer distance up to 250 mm intended for cooling electronics components and CPU of mobile PC. It gives the results of investigating several prototypes of mLHPs incorporated into remote heat exchanger (RHE) systems in different conditions. It has been established that in the nominal range of heat loads orientation does not practically affect the mLHPs operating characteristics. Under air cooling the total thermal resistance of such a system is 1.7–4.0 °C/W and depends strongly on the cooling conditions and the radiator efficiency. In this case the mLHP’s own thermal resistance is in the limits from 0.3 to 1.2 °C/W, and the maximum capacity reaches 80–120 Bt. The obtained results make it possible to regard mLHPs as quite promising devices for RHE systems providing thermal regimes for electronics components and personal computers.