A Novel Carbon Nano Tube based Wick Structure for Heat Pipes/Vapor Chambers

The paper introduces the novel concept of using carbon nano tube (CNTs) based wick structures for high performance heat pipes and vapor chambers. This ongoing research aims to replace the copper wick structures with high conductive CNT wick structures. Individual carbon nanotubes possess extremely high thermal conductivities of the order of 2000-3000 W/m-K. With such a material as the wick in a heat pipe, the effective thermal conductivity of the fluid saturated wick will be significantly higher that a copper-based wick.