The heat pipe and vapor chamber has obvious advantages in 5G mobile phone cooling applications
With the advent of the 5G era, it brings people faster speeds and better experiences, but for electronic devices, it will inevitably increase power consumption and heat generation. At the same time, the structure of mobile phones is becoming increasingly lightweight, making the cooling design of mobile phones increasingly difficult.
At present, the thermal solution of mobile phones mainly include: thermal conductive gel, graphite sheet, graphene, homogenizing plate, heat pipe, etc. Compared to the cooling solutions released by major manufacturers in 2019, the iPhone 11 uses graphite flakes for cooling. Graphite sheets are an ultra-thin heat dissipation material, and Apple has always used graphite sheets as a heat dissipation solution, but the heating phenomenon of the iPhone 11 is extremely serious.
At present, thermal designers have put a lot of effort into heat dissipation, and most 5G phones use copper tube heat dissipation technology. For example, using a heat pipe with a diameter of 3mm and a length of 60mm, the heat dissipation area reaches 6000mm, which increases the heat dissipation efficiency by 20 times compared to the one without copper pipes, and reduces the core temperature of the CPU by 8 ℃. This heat dissipation technology greatly improves the performance of mobile phones.
In addition, the use of graphene and vapor chamber cooling technology is also a new thermal solution . The vapor chamber covers both the CPU and GPU, and the heat emitted by the CPU will be transmitted to the vapor chamber through a shorter path. Then, through the heat transfer system, the heat will be diffused throughout the entire body to achieve the purpose of heat dissipation.
Nowadays, almost all 5G smartphones use heat pipes or vapor chamber for cooling, but most manufacturers still use heat pipe cooling technology. The main reason is that the cost of heat pipes is low and the heat dissipation power is high, while the cost of vapor chamber is high and will increase the weight of the product. In terms of heat dissipation performance, the thermal performance of the vapor chamber is 15-30% better than that of the heat pipe, mainly because the VC is in direct contact with heat sources such as the CPU, and the heat pipe needs to install a mounting plate between the heat source and the heat pipe. With the advent of the future 5G era, the heat dissipation technology of vapor chamber and heat pipes will become the main cooling solutions in the field of mobile electronics, and the future cooling technology will also develop towards a lighter, thinner, and more efficient direction.
