Evaporative Wicking Phenomena on Nanotextured Surfaces for Heat Pipe Applications

Thermal management has become more important as high-performance electronics have concentrated heat loads with current cooling technologies. This motivates the implementation of new cooling solutions to dissipate high heat levels from high-performance electronics. Evaporative cooling is one of the most promising approaches for meeting these future thermal demands. Thin-film evaporation promotes heat dissipation through the phase change process with minimal conduction resistance. In this process, it is important to design surface properties and structures that can minimize meniscus thickness, increase liquid-vapor interface area, and enhance evaporation performances. In this study, we thereby investigate thin-film evaporation by employing nanotextured copper substrates for varying thermal conditions. Specifically, we visualize the liquid spreading on the nanotextured surfaces using a high-speed imaging technique to quantify evaporative heat transfer for various designs. The permeability is calculated using an enhanced wicking model to account for the evaporation effect. The mass balance measurements allow us to calculate evaporation rates. Then, we employ infrared thermography to examine two-dimensional temporal temperature profiles of the samples during the evaporative wicking with a given heat flux. The combination of time-lapse images, evaporation rate measurements, and temperature profiles will provide a comprehensive understanding of evaporation performances of textured surfaces.