Laser microstructuring of extremely-thin vapor chamber with hybrid configuration for excellent heat dissipation

Efficient thermal management has become a bottleneck for the further development of highly integrated and high-power optoelectronic devices. Vapor chambers (VCs) based on the passive liquid–vapor phase-change process have attracted increasing attention due to their extraordinary thermal management capabilities together with easy-to-assemble advantages. Nowadays, as optoelectronic devices continuously get more compact and miniaturized, there exists a great demand to develop high-performance ultra-thin VCs with overall thicknesses below 0.3 mm. However, the demand has been seldom reached by present VCs with either the layered or spaced configurations. Here, we demonstrated an extremely-thin VC (ETVC) with a three-region hybrid configuration fabricated via a facile laser micro/nano structuring approach, reaching a remarkable effective thermal conductivity of 12032 W/(m⋅K) with an overall thickness of only ∼ 0.22 mm. Cross-arrayed micro-protrusions were fabricated on both the evaporation and condensation regions of the lower plate of the VC, connected by water/vapor passages composed of parallel micro-channels. The micro-channels were designed to make a layered-spaced hybrid configuration to accommodate the fast flow of both water and vapor. The surfaces of both the micro-protrusions and micro-channels were covered with plentiful finer features to render them excellent wicking performances. Such a laser microstructured three-region hybrid configuration enhances all main processes inside a VC (i.e., water evaporation, water condensation, and water/vapor transportation), boosting the self-driven circulation of water/vapor to efficiently homogenize temperature under different heat fluxes. We believe this work can lay a promising rationale for designing and fabricating highly-efficient highly-compact VCs for the increasing thermal management demand within high-end optoelectronics.