Research And Development On Heat Pipe Heat Sink For Power Electronic Module

As we know, heat pipe is a high efficient component of heat transfer which is especially applicable to the situation of high heat flux. With the rapid development of electronic technology, it becomes an important topic to apply heat pipe technology to high power electronic devices.As a typical power electronic module, IGBT has the same thermo design request as other high power electronic devices. Based on consulting a number of references, the performance of thermosyphon, which is the key component of heat pipe heat sink for IGBT, is studied, and the heat pipe heat sink for IGBT is developed and researched with the approach of combining the theoretic analysis and the experiment study. The main results in this paper are as follows:(1) Study on starting up performance of thermosyphon: According to the study on the states before and after starting up of thermosyphon with the various filling amount, it is considered that the phase change heat transfer inside the copper-water thermosyphon with a large ratio of length and diameter is not only influenced by the boiling degree of superheat, but also controlled by evaporation and companied with the boiling of the thin liquid film. The influence of the vapor amount from the controlled evaporation area to the performance of the thermosyphon is studied theoretically. The semi-quantitative correlation of vapor pressure, vapor flow amount, area of phase change and vapor amount inside the thermosyphon during the whole process of starting up is described by means of the temperature change of a thermocouple installed on the pipe wall. (2) Study on the optimal filling amount: The performance of thermosyphon is greatly affected by the filling amount. The work fluid filling amount in the thermosyphon is studied, and the more simple and reliable approach of calculating optimal filling amount is presented by means of combining the theoretic analysis and the experimental study. (3) Study on the performance of the inclined thermosyphon: The mechanism and performance of heat transfer inside the inclined thermosyphon, and heat transfer performance of the inclined thermosyphon in operating situation are discussed. The foundation of applying thermosyphon to heat sink for the electronic module is built.(4) Development of the IGBT heat pipe heat sink: It is found that the heat pipe heat sink for IGBT can completely meet the design requests through the theoretic analysis, simulating calculation and experimental verification. Then, the one of key factors of improving the performance of heat sink is the contact thermal resistance. All of research results indicated that heat pipe heat sink for IGBT can completely meet the thermodispersion request which is an effective method to solve the cooling of the power electronic module. These results not only develop the way of applying heat sink for power electronic module, but also establish the base of commercialization of heat pipe heat sink for power electronic module.