Proceedings of IPACK2009 InterPACK'09 July 19-23, 2009, San Francisco, California, USA

IPACK2009-89173
NOVEL FLUORESCENT VISUALIZATION METHOD TO CHARACTERIZE TRANSPORT PROPERTIES IN MICRO/NANO HEAT PIPE WICK STRUCTURES
Pramod Chamarthy, H. Peter J. de Bock, Boris Russ, Shakti Chauhan, Brian Rush, Stanton E. Weaver, Tao Deng, GE Global Research Niskayuna, NY, USA Kripa Varanasi Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA, USA

ABSTRACT Heat pipes have been gaining a lot of popularity in electronics cooling applications due to their ease of operation, reliability, and high effective thermal conductivity. An important component of a heat pipe is the wick structure, which transports the condensate from condenser to evaporator. The design of wick structures is complicated by competing requirements to create high capillary driving forces and maintain high permeability. While generating large pore sizes will help achieve high permeability, it will significantly reduce the wicks capillary performance. This study presents a novel experimental method to simultaneously measure capillary and permeability characteristics of the wick structures using fluorescent visualization. This technique will be used to study the effects of pore size and gravitational force on the flow-related properties of the wick structures. Initial results are presented on wick samples visually characterized from zero to nine g acceleration on a centrifuge. These results will provide a tool to understand the physics involved in transport through porous structures and help in the design of high performance heat pipes. INTRODUCTION Recently there has been an increasing demand for faster and smaller chips. Since the invention of the microprocessor, the number of transistors per chip has increased by five orders of magnitude [1]. As a result, the heat generated by some high performance chips has already exceeded 100 W/cm2 [2]. The junction temperature of these chips should be maintained below a certain value (typically 125 C) to ensure reliable operation. With this constraint, considerable effort is being made to

develop cooling technologies with the capability to remove heat from the device while maintaining acceptable component operating temperatures [3,4]. In typical electronics cooling solutions the chip is attached to a heat sink with a thermal interface in between. The thermal interface resistance, spreading resistance, and the convection resistance at the heat sink are the common thermal bottlenecks that need to be minimized to achieve better cooling. The performance of the heat sink can increase by increasing the convective heat transfer coefficient or by increasing the surface area. It is often challenging to increase heat transfer coefficients due to fluid selection or pumping power limitations. Even with a very low convection resistance, the conduction (spreading) resistance can account for a high overall thermal resistance. Several high performance heat sinks have heat pipes embedded in them to facilitate heat transport with very low spreading resistance.
Evaporator Section Transport (adiabatic) Section
liquid vapor liquid

Condenser Section

evaporation

condensation

Heat In

Heat Out

Heat pipe casing

Wicking structure

Vapor channel

Figure 1: Heat pipe configuration

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Heat pipes are passive devices that utilize two-phase heat transfer to transport heat. In general, a heat pipe, as shown in Figure 1, consists of a hollow casing with an internal wick structure and a vapor channel. The wick structure is saturated with a working fluid, which is in equilibrium with the saturated vapor. When heat is added to the system, the liquid inside the wick evaporates and flows to condenser region. At the condenser, heat is rejected as the vapor condenses back to a liquid. The capillary forces in the wick structure act as a pump to transport the liquid to the evaporator region. The effective pore size of the wick determines the capillary force available to pump the liquid. Hence, a smaller pore size can generate the necessary force required to pump against g forces. However, as the pore size becomes smaller, the resistance to the flow increases, limiting the mass transport, and, as a result, the amount of heat that can be transported. Hence, the design of the wick structure is critical both for the mass transport and heat transfer characteristics of a heat pipe [5,6].

From Eq. 1 it can be seen that the height to which the liquid rises is inversely proportional to the pore radius. For wick structures with micro- or nano-sized pores the liquid column can be a few meters in height For example, the water column height for a 1 m pore radius will be greater than 10 m, making the method impractical for laboratory measurement. This limitation can be overcome by measuring the rate of rise of the liquid column. The theoretical expression for the rise time is given by the Lucas-Washburn [10,11](Eq. 2);

t / t ref = H / H ref ln(1 H / H ref ) ,

Eq. 2

which takes the following form in the asymptotic short-time limit

H / H ref ~ 2t / t ref .

Eq. 3

NOMENCLATURE
g
h P Pc

gravitational acceleration constant height pressure capillary pressure difference hydrostatic pressure difference mesh number effective capillary radius temperature density surface tension contact angle

[-] [m] [Pa] [Pa] [Pa] [-] [m] [K] [kg/m3] [N/m] [-]

Here H=H(t) is the rise height and Href = 4 / gDp and tref = 32Href / gD2p are, respectively, reference heights and times. Adkins et al. [12,13] presented a different method to characterize wicks. In this method, the wick is saturated with the fluid and a pressure difference is applied across the sample. If the wick is flooded on one side, the capillary force at the downstream section will hold the fluid against the pressure gradient. This pressure gradient is steadily increased until the meniscus is not able to withstand the pressure and a leak develops. When the gas leaks through the wick, it is visible through the bubbles, which are formed in the fluid, and hence the test is called bubble point measurement technique. By knowing the pressure at which the gas leaks through the wick, the effective pore radius can be estimated using Eq. 4.
rc = 2 cos Pc
Eq. 4

Pg
N
rc

MEASUREMENT METHOD Several techniques have been proposed to study the capillary performance of wick structures [7,8]. The rising meniscus method provides a simple and effective way to test the wicks [9]. In this method a portion of the wick is submerged in the liquid and the height to which the liquid rises is measured. The height (h) to which the liquid column rises is a balance between the capillary pressure acting at the liquid interface ( Pc ) and the hydrostatic pressure and can be obtained by the equation,
h= 2 cos grc
Eq. 1

The bubble point test is able to identify the minimum pressure at which the gas leaks through the wick. This corresponds to the maximum pore size on the wick surface. Hence, if the wick has non-uniform pore sizes or imperfections on the surface, the bubble point measurement will be substantially different from the mean pore size of the wick [7]. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate a technique that can be used to characterize the capillary performance of wick structures from 0-9 g accelerations. As described in the previous section, bubble point measurement is only able to measure the maximum pore size of the wick, which might under-estimate the actual pore size of the wick. Hence, a visualization-based

where, is the contact angle, rc is the effective pore radius, is the surface tension of the liquid and is the density.

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meniscus tracking method was developed to characterize the wicks. Several methods have been described in the literature to visualize flow through porous media. Khalili et al. [14] demonstrated a non-intrusive method to make quantitative measurements in opaque wicks using positive emission tomography. Gupta et al. and Bichenkov et al. [15,16] proposed the use of X-Rays to study single and multi-phase flows through porous media. Sederman and Gladden [17] used threedimensional magnetic resonance imaging and flow visualization data to study the flow characteristics through packed bed of glass spheres. Howle et al. [18] used a variation of the shadowgraph technique to study the formation of patterns at the onset of convection in fluid saturated porous media. Wang and Khalili [19] used particle image velocimetry technique to study the flow of a refractive-index-matched fluid through a packed bed of glass spheres. All the flow visualization methods described above either require that the wicks are transparent or need an elaborate setup to make the measurements. Since the high g acceleration tests were to be conducted on a centrifuge, the visualization method needed to be portable. In the present study, a novel fluorescent dye visualization method is developed to characterize the capillary performance of wick structures with micro- and nano-sized pores. The method is tested and calibrated against bubble point measurement. The fluorescent dye visualization method is used to demonstrate the wick performance from zero - nine g accelerations on a centrifuge. FLUORESCENT DYE VISUALIZATION AT 1G The visualization method had to satisfy two objectives. 1) The method should provide a clear contrast between saturated and unsaturated regions of the wick structure. 2) The setup should be light and be portable onto a spin table. After evaluation of several visualization techniques, best results were obtained using UV visualization. A schematic of this method is sketched in Figure 2. A UV light source shines on a wick structure that is saturated with water/UV dye solution. The dye absorbs the incident UV light and emits in the visible wavelength. A filter between the sample and the camera is used to block reflected UV light and only allow light in the visible spectrum to reach the camera. Since the experiment is performed in a dark room, the saturated region in the wick will be visible in the image while the unsaturated region will remain dark.

UV light source 254 nm

Regular video camera

Filter sheet that blocks UV but passes visual light

Vapor Chamber
Wick

Wick saturated with water/UV dye solution

Figure 2: UV Visualization setup Given the complexity of the challenge, the following parameters were identified to be crucial for performance and addressed in detail: Dye selection: analyze excitation and emission characteristics Dye concentration: find optimal concentration level Camera settings: optimum exposure times for best contrast Filter selection: filter to block UV light to camera

Baseline: UV light on unsaturated sample

Test: UV light on saturated sample

Test: UV light &hood light on saturated sample

Figure 3: UV Baseline results Optimization of these parameters resulted in a method where a clear contrast between saturated and unsaturated regions is achieved (see Figure 3). IFWB-C7 (Risk Reactor) was chosen as the fluorescent dye and a UV pen ray lamp (UVP, LLC) was chosen as the light source. Excess liquid pools at the sides and corners between the package and wick structure and can be observed as bright spots in the images. The package was able to retain the fluid in vertical (1g) position and the fluid was able to wick against the gravity vector.

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t=0s

t=14s

t=28s

shown in Figure 5. The theoretical average pore diameter found to give the best fit for short times was 1.6 microns. The experimental maximum pore diameter for the wick, obtained through bubble point measurements, was 8 m. As explained above, the bubble point measurement only gives the maximum pore size of the wick and the mean pore diameter is expected to be less than 8 m. The evaporation of the working fluid and non-uniform porosities are expected to be the causes for the mismatch of the curves at longer time scales. This effect is unaccounted for in the theoretical model. This method can be used to characterize both capillary and permeability performance of wick structures. The team hopes to use this method to further study wicks and compare these results to analytical models.

t=42s

t=56s

t=70s

Figure 4: Visualization of wick saturation in copper sintered wick of 75 m using fluorescent dye (circular wick sample in vertical orientation)

EXPERIMENTAL SETUP FOR HIGH-G ACCELERATION TESTS

Figure 4 shows the progression of the saturation front through a circular wick structure in vertical orientation captured with a video camera. Image analysis was used to track the height of the wicking front as a function of time (Figure 5).
30.0

Test fixtures were designed and fabricated to hold the camera, light sources and wick samples. The sample holder, presented in Figure 6, was designed in order to fix the location of the light sources with respect to the sample and provide a repetitive method with consistent illumination levels. This fixture was fabricated out of Polycarbonate using rapid prototyping methods.

Height of the dye front (mm) .

25.0

Theory
20.0

15.0

10.0

5.0

D_pore = 1.6e-7 m H_ref = 7.3 m t_ref = 6.9e6 s

0.0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60

A
Camera window

Time (s)

Figure 5: Comparison of the experimental and theoretical meniscus rise rates. A theoretical model for the rise time of the meniscus has been made by modeling the wick as a bundle of cylindrical capillaries whose pore diameter is equal to the average pore diameter of the porous medium comprising the wick. In the model, zero contact angle and textbook values for the surface tension, density, and viscosity of methanol were assumed. Calculated values for reference times in Eq. 2 were ~106 seconds so a fit to the experimental wick rise time data was made by varying only the assumed pore diameter in Eq. 3, as

2xUVP 254 nm light source

Pockets for flexible strip to clamp on penlight source Edge to clamp on TGP Edge to clamp on substrate TGP Wick substrate

A -A

Figure 6: Wick sample and light source holder fixture

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Saturated wick at 2.6g, excess liquid pools on top

Figure 7: Wick sample high g text fixture

An aluminum camera fixture was designed and fabricated for mounting on the AFRL centrifuge (Figure 7). The frame provides fixed positioning of the camera with respect to the sample. The structure was designed out of aluminum profile for its favorable strength/weight ratio. The high-g acceleration experiments were conducted at the AFRL test facility. The setup was mounted and balanced on the AFRL centrifuge and an accelerometer was added to the setup. The acceleration of the sample was calculated by correcting for the difference in radius between the accelerometer and the sample. The mean sample radius was found to be at 44 inches. A live video feed of the sample was available in the control room as well as live data feed from the accelerometer. The testing plan consisted of: - acceleration 0 g to 2.5 g 30 seconds. - hold at 2.5 g for 60 seconds. - deceleration 2.5 g to 0 g 30 seconds.

Sample is decelerated, excess liquid returns

Figure 8: Wick saturation in accelerated environment (g-force direction up)

HIGH-G ACCELERATION TEST RESULTS

Figure 8 presents images of the wick sample as recorded by the camera at different acceleration conditions. A graph presents the acceleration profile. A slight excess pool of liquid can be observed on the sides of the sample at 0.0gs. At higher acceleration, the excess liquid pools at the top.

The sample was accelerated to 2.6gs and held at that acceleration for 60 seconds. It is important to note that the main square area of the wick remains visible. This indicates that the UV dye solution is present inside the square wick throughout the acceleration to 2.6 gs. After a deceleration to 0.0 gs the liquid pool from the top re-floods the edges of the wick sample. This acceleration profile was repeated. During the test confidence was gained in the strength of the setup and an additional acceleration profile was added. In this profile the sample is accelerated to around 2.5 gs in 30 seconds after which the sample is accelerated an additional 1g every 30 seconds. This was repeated until the accelerometer reading was at 10 gs. As the accelerometer was at larger radius than the sample the effective corresponding sample acceleration was found to be 8.9 gs. Interestingly the camera position adjusted itself when the acceleration exceeded 5 gs. This is attributed to the internal suspension of the camera and did not affect the measurements.

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CONCLUSIONS Experimental validation of capillary performance of wick structures is crucial in the development of high performance heat pipes. A discussion is presented in which the challenges of measuring such performance for wicks with micro- to nanosized wick structures is highlighted. The advantages and disadvantages of using a bubble point test method for evaluation of such performance are presented. A disadvantage of the bubble point method is that it only gives the maximum pore size in the wick. If the sample has a large variation in pore sizes, this might not be a good representation. However, if the spread in pore size is reasonable, the bubble point method proves to be a fast and simple method to get an initial estimate for sample performance. A novel method for saturation visualization is presented in which a sample is saturated using a fluid with a fluorescent dye. An ultraviolet light source and a camera with UV-filter are used to track the fluorescent dye front through the sample. Using a post-processing algorithm, the dye front rise as a function of time was established. The rate of rise method was used to measure the mean pore diameter of the wick and compared with the value obtained from bubble point measurement. After validating the method, the technique was used to characterize the performance of wick samples in high-g accelerated environments. The wick visualization technique is found to be a valuable method for obtaining information on the wicks global and local capillary and permeability performance. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This paper is based upon work supported by DARPA under SSC SD Contract No. N66001-08-C-2008. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SSC San Diego. REFERENCES 1. Wang, P., and Bar-Cohen, A., 2007, On-chip hot spot cooling using silicon thermoelectric microcoolers, Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 102, No. 3.
0g 2.5 g 5.0 g 8.9 g 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

Saturated wick at 8.9g, excess liquid pools on top

Sample is decelerated, excess liquid returns

Figure 9: Wick saturation in accelerated environment (gforce direction up) At the high g-force acceleration, a reduction in brightness is observed at the bottom edge of the sample. This gradient in intensity was observed to be a strong function of the g force acting on the wick sample. Figure 10 shows the intensity profile along the centerline (along the g-force direction) at 4 different accelerations. This is attributed to the meniscus shape change at the accelerated condition and will be a subject of further study in subsequent phases of the program. The fact that there is measurable emission at the bottom edge gives confidence that fluid is present at this location (compared to the zero emission from unsaturated regions as seen in the Figure 3 baseline).
Normalized intensity (A.U.)
1.1 1.0 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4

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Length along the cross section (mm)

Figure 10: The intensity profile along the centerline (along the g-force direction) at 4 different accelerations.

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5. Iverson, B.D., Davis, T.W., Garimella, S.V., North, M.T., Sukhvinder, S.K., 2007 Heat and Mass Transport in Heat Pipe Wick Structures, Journal of Thermophysics and Heat Transfer, Vol. 21, No. 2, AprilJune 2007. 6. Chi, S. W., 1976, Heat Pipe Theory and Practice, McGrawHill, New York. 7. Faghri, A, 1995, Heat Pipe Science and Technology, Taylor and Francis, New York 8. Peterson, G.P, 1994, An Introduction to Heat Pipes, modeling, testing and applications, John Wiley & Sons Inc, New York 9. Semenic, T, Lin, Y,Y, Catton, I, 2008, Thermophysical Properties of Biporous Heat Pipe Evaporators, Journal of Heat Transfer, Vol. 130, Issue 2, 022602, February 2008. 10. Lucas, R., 1918, Rate of capillary ascension of liquids,Kolloid Z, Vol. 23, No. 15. 11. Washburn, E.W., 1921, The dynamics of capillary flow, Physical Review, Vol. 17, No. 273. 12. Adkins, D.R., Moss, T., 1990, Measuring Flow Properties of Wicks for heat Pipe Solar Receivers, Solar Engineering 13. Adkins, D. R., and Dykhuizen, R. C., Procedures for Measuring the Properties of Heat-Pipe Wick Materials, 28th Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference, Society of Automotive Engineers, Warrendale, PA, Vol. 2, 1993, pp. 911917.

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