ABSTRACT

A common type of heat pipe used for computer cooling applications has been copper as a fluid container and water as a working fluid. The nature of copper such as high mass and material cost, however, has spurred considerable interest on aluminum as a potential replacement while aluminum-water combination is subject to corrosion reaction. In this paper, we present the technology development results attempted to enable the aluminum-water heat pipes. We studied an approach of providing thermodynamic compatibility between the aluminum surface and water by a formation of a defect-free hydration layer on top of the aluminum surface. Our trial of this technique applied to non-wick aluminum heat pipe samples revealed that the non-condensable gas generation can be effectively suppressed by the new coating structure evidenced by continuous working of heat pipe after a high temperature reliability testing of more than 300 hours at 130 °C. We also applied the same technique to wicked aluminum pipes and evaluated heat carrying capacity and thermal resistance.