Intra-Lid Multi-Core Vapor Chamber Architecture for Heterogeneous Electronic Packages: Technology Concept to Prototype Evaluation

Thermal management of future heterogeneous electronic packages with extreme heat fluxes relies on effective spreading of heat in the package lid. Intra-lid integration of vapor chambers is a promising strategy for simultaneous dissipation of large total heat loads and localized high-flux hot spots. However, conventional vapor chambers comprising a single vapor core require relatively thick evaporator wicks to prevent dry out at high total heat loads, thereby imposing a large temperature drop across the wick at the hot spot location. We recently proposed a cascaded multi-core vapor chamber (CMVC) architecture comprising a single-core vapor chamber stacked on an array of smaller footprint vapor cores having relatively thinner wicks. The multi-core array is designed to spread heat from arbitrarily distributed high-flux hot spots before they enter the top vapor chamber having a thicker wick. Then, the top vapor chamber spreads the high total heat loads to the base of the mounted heat sink. To evaluate the proposed CMVC technology, we make a weighted decision to identify an appropriate minimum viable prototype for subsequent design and testing. A reduced-order model is used to determine the dimensions and properties of the wick and vapor core that minimize the temperature drop across the down-selected multi-core vapor chamber architecture for a given power map, considering manufacturing process constraints. Finite element analysis (FEA) simulations are employed to decide a condenser wall thickness that avoids permanent deformation in the vapor chamber architecture under a mechanical load. A prototype is manufactured by a commercial vendor following these parameters and manufacturing constraints. As predicted by the thermal model, experimental characterization of this first-reported multi-core vapor chamber array prototype offers a notable reduction in temperature drop relative to a benchmark solid copper spreader, owing to attenuation of hot spots at a low temperature difference.