Novel Lightweight, Highly Thermally Conductive Graphene-Enhanced Heat Pipes for Electronics Cooling and Thermal Management Applications

As electronic equipment becomes increasingly lightweight, miniaturized, and highly integrated, the heat dissipation challenges of electronic devices become increasingly greater. Heat pipes are among the most efficient heat-conducting elements. However, conventional heat pipes are gradually unable to meet the heat dissipation needs and lightweight requirements of electronic devices due to limitations in the intrinsic thermal conductivity of the metal and weight constraints. Therefore, it is imperative to explore new high thermal conductivity and lightweight heat pipes. This paper developed a new graphene-reinforced nickel-based heat pipe and a graphene-reinforced aluminum-based heat pipe. The results show that the two graphene-reinforced heat pipes significantly reduce the mass of the heat pipe and improve the heat transfer performance of the heat pipe.