Heat Sink Solutions：Vapor Chamber (VC) Cooling Technology

The Vapor Chamber (VC), fully known as the vacuum chamber vapor chamber cooling technology, is a vacuum-sealed cavity with a micro-structured inner wall, typically made of copper. When heat is conducted from a heat source to the evaporation zone, the cooling liquid in the chamber vaporizes in a low-vacuum environment, absorbing heat and rapidly expanding in volume. The gaseous cooling medium then fills the entire chamber. When the gaseous working fluid contacts a cooler area, it condenses, releasing the heat accumulated during evaporation. The condensed cooling liquid returns to the evaporation zone through the micro-structured capillary channels, repeating this cycle within the chamber.

Compared to heat pipes, VC offers superior thermal conductivity and flexibility:

Thermal conductivity:
- Copper: 401 W/m·K
- Heat pipes: 5,000–10,000 W/m·K
- Vapor chambers: 20,000–100,000 W/m·K (or even higher)
Heat pipes conduct heat in one dimension, with limited shape and width. However, they offer high flexibility in system arrangement and cost-effectiveness when combined with copper plates and multiple heat pipes, making them widely applicable.
Vapor chambers are unconstrained by shape, allowing design according to chip layouts—even arbitrary shapes—and can accommodate heat dissipation from multiple heat sources at different heights.

Therefore, the vapor chamber (VC) is a more advanced and efficient heat-conductive component than heat pipes, especially excelling in addressing thermal management issues of high-density electronic devices.

Currently, vapor chambers (VCs) can be divided into conventional vapor chambers and ultra-thin vapor chambers.

Conventional Vapor Chambers

Constructed by welding upper and lower copper plates with intermediate capillary structures and support pillars, conventional vapor chambers are typically used in high heat flux applications. Their two-dimensional heat diffusion capability helps CPUs with high TDP (or in overclocked states) dissipate heat efficiently and cool to safe operating temperatures, extending the service life of components and products. Depending on specific use cases, conventional vapor chambers can be further subdivided into CPU vapor chambers, display vapor chambers, laptop vapor chambers, etc.

Ultra-Thin Vapor Chambers

Ultra-thin vapor chambers generally refer to those with a total thickness of less than 2mm. As the overall thickness of smartphones has been under 10mm in recent years, ultra-thin vapor chambers play a pivotal role in smartphone heat dissipation solutions. Market demand for ultra-thin vapor chambers is increasingly growing, particularly the application and research of those with a thickness below 0.8mm, which have become a hot research topic in recent years.