Engineering Commons^™

Fabrication And Thermal Characterization Of Composite Cu-Cnt Micropillars For Capillary-Driven Phase-Change Cooling Devices, Gerardo Rojo, Siavash Ghanbari, Jeff Darabi

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

This paper presents the fabrication, testing, and modeling of an array of composite copper-carbon nanotubes (Cu-CNT) micropillars as a wick structure for potential application in passive phase-change cooling systems. This novel wick structure has a larger spacing at the base of the micropillars to provide a higher liquid permeability and mushroom-like structures on the top surface of the micropillars with a smaller spacing to provide a greater capillary pressure. The composite Cu-CNT micropillars were fabricated by an electrochemical deposition method on a patterned copper template. Cauliflower-like nanostructures were then grown on the top surface of the micropillars using chronoamperometry technique …