SBIR-STTR Award

Illuminex Corporation proposes a NASA Phase I SBIR project to develop high performance, lightweight, low-profile heat pipes with enhanced thermal transfer properties enabled by utilizing copper nanowire arrays as the wick material in the heat pipe. Thermal management is a critical issue for advanced electronic and optical systems as current cooling techniques are being rapidly outpaced by the heat load of new technologies. Superior thermal control technologies are needed both for NASA's science spacecraft components and commercial products such as computers and medical lasers. The incorporation of nano-structured materials in heat pipe manufacturing will allow the development of thermal management devices with increased heat dissipation efficiency and a reduced size and weight profile as compared to currently utilized cooling approaches. Illuminex will develop processes to engineer the nanowire wick directly onto the heat pipe package, and using this approach, it s envisioned that heat pipe systems can be manufactured directly into the housings of devices requiring advanced thermal management. This nanotechnology enabled miniaturization can be further size reduced to near the MEMS level for cooling micro-electronics and sensors. Phase II will lead to full commercialization and manufacturing of high performance, low profile, and lightweight heat pipes.

Heat pipes are widely used for passive, two-phase electronics cooling. As advanced high power, high performance electronics in space based and terrestrial applications produce ever increasing heat fluxes, heat pipes with improved thermal capacity are sought. Illuminex Corporation has demonstrated that using copper nanowire arrays as the wick in heat pipes increases the heat transfer capabilities. Phase I developed processing techniques to engineer copper nanowire arrays on copper sheet that were subsequently incorporated into vapor chamber style heat pipes as the wicking material at the evaporator region. In Phase II, the program will be advanced to manufacture large area copper sheets fully covered with nanowires on one side. This material will be used to construct the entire heat pipe, package and wick. This will enable the development of high performance, lightweight, low-profile (< 1 mm) heat pipes with enhanced thermal transfer properties. The decrease in weight and size is desirable for NASA space projects and will find commercial application in radar systems, servers, and portable electronic devices. The use of less material in heat pipe manufacture will result in lower production costs while the superior performance and smaller size will provide electronic system designers with greater flexibility in thermal management system design.