Thermal behavior investigation of silicon-Pyrex micro heat pipe

High heat flux is the major reason for the malfunctioning or shortened life of high-power light-emitting diodes (LEDs) or integrated circuit (IC) components. Cooling technical devices have been widely studied in recent years. A heat pipe made of silicon wafer and Pyrex 7740 has been used in the experiments. Silicon-to-Pyrex bonding is used for the visualization of the flow behavior of the working liquid in heat transfer. A thermal behavior testing system for micro heat pipes (MHPs), including a vacuum chamber, heat flux sensors and thermocouples, was designed and established. The experiments revealed the characteristics of the MEMS heat pipe in LEDs heat transfer, and the maximum equivalent thermal conductivity of the MHPs was 10.6 times that of the silicon wafer. Furthermore, the structure of MHP can be optimized based on these experimental results. They can also be the experimental basis for theoretical study of two-phase flow on the micro scale. (C) 2014 Author(s).