Research Projects

Heat pipe is one of the efficient examples of thermal management systems. It operates by taking the advantage phase change.Conventional heat pips are larger in size and not suitable for transferring heat from localised hot spots in electronics. Hence an attempt is being made at LEOS to develop Micro heat pipe based upon MEMS architecture. MEMS based heat pipes have the advantage of fabricating channels and structures down to few microns’ dimensions. Embedded directly on the hot spots in electronic circuits, micro heat pipes can act as a passive heat transferring thermal management system which has wide range applications in space based systems as they are compact and lighter. From the operational perspective, the heat pipe is a closed cycle where within an evacuated closed tubular chamber fluid evaporates at the hot end and condenses at the cooler end, thus enabling heat transfer. Micro Heat Pipe Development at LEOS: Work done in LEOS so far includes designing and fabrication of micro heat pipes, charging them appropriately, sealing and testing them to study its heat transferring properties. Photolithographic masks were designed with respect to the ideas obtained from literature and Silicon based Micro heat pipes were fabricated and tested with in house MEMS fabrication facility and testing facility.There is a further scope to improve upon design and testing methodology to have better understanding on these promising devices to make them suitable for space application.