Development of an Efficient and Controllable Nano-porous Copper with Good Wettability and Capillary Performance for Wicks of Vapor Chamber

To meet the heat dissipation requirements of microelectronic devices, it is urgent to develop an efficient method to fabricate a controllable micro/nano structure for the wick in vapor chamber, which is widely investigated for its high thermal conductivity and small size. This work proposed a controllable fabrication of nano-porous copper (NPC) with high efficiency, which includes electrodeposition and dealloying. A uniform Cu–Zn alloy with single phase was prepared as the precursor for dealloying through electrodeposition. An innovative solution system for dealloying was developed for the fabrication of the bi-continuous NPC, in which the efficiency was improved ten times compared to the conventional acid solution. In addition, the effects of dealloying parameters on the NPC morphology and the process efficiency have also been studied systematically. Based on the above method, both good wettability and capillary performance were achieved by NPC with tunable pore size, which indicates its great application prospects in wicks for high-performance vapor chamber.