Fabrication and thermal performance of mesh-type ultra-thin vapor chambers

•Cost-effective mesh-type ultra-thin vapor chambers were fabricated.•Meshes and the bottom copper sheet were treated to be hydrophilic.•Heat load of 50 W was achieved for these 1.26–1.77 mm ultra-thin vapor chambers. Ultra-thin vapor chamber (UTVC) is an efficient heat transfer element that meets the heat dissipation requirement of miniaturized electronics. In this study, cost-effective mesh-type UTVCs (total thickness: 1.26–1.77 mm) were fabricated and investigated. One single layer of coarse copper mesh was used as mechanical support and to provide vapor path, and two layers of fine copper mesh were sintered together as wick. The copper meshes and the bottom copper sheet were treated by plasma to obtain hydrophilicity, and the upper and bottom copper sheets were bonded by a new welding process. The effects of coarse mesh count and wire diameter, fine mesh count, tilt angle and cooling water temperature on the UTVC heat transfer performance were studied experimentally. Results showed that SP3 (1.53 mm) could dissipate 50 W in the horizontal orientation with a thermal resistance of 0.197 °C/W, about 4.4 times lower than that of 1.5 mm copper sheet. With the good thermal performance and low fabricating cost of the UTVCs, we hope that our work could promote the application of UTVC in the field of high performance miniaturized electronics.