Miniature cylindrical metal powder sintered wick heat pipe （sintered heat pipe） is an ideal component with super-high thermal efficiency for high heat flux electronics cooling. The sintering process for sintered wick is important for its quality. The sintering process was optimally designed based on the equation of the heat transfer limit of sintered heat pipe. Four-step sintering process was proposed to fabricate sintered wick. The sintering parameters including sintering temperature, sintering time, sintering atmosphere and sintering position were discussed. The experimental results showed that the proper sintering temperature was 950 ℃ for Cu powder of 159μm and 900 ℃ for Cu powders of 81 and 38 μm, respectively, while the wick thickness was 0.45 mm and sintering time was 3 h. The optimized sintering time was 3 h for 0.45 and 0.6 mm wick thickness and 1 h for 0.75 mm wick thickness, respectively, when copper powder diameter was 159μm and sintering temperature was 950 ℃. Redox reduction reaction between H2 and CuO during sintering could produce segmentation cracks in Cu powders as a second structure. Sintering at vertical position can effectively avoid the generation of gap between wick and the inner wall of pipe.
With the rapid rising of heat flux and reduction of heat dissipating space of microelectronic devises, flattened sintered heat pipe has become an ideal conducting element of use in the electronic cooling field. A manufacturing technology named phase change flattening process is presented to fabricate the flattened grooved-sintered wick heat pipe （GSHP for short）. Deformation geometry of flattened GSHP and the elasto-plastic deformation of flattening process are analyzed theoretically and verified by experiments. The results show that the vapor pressure inside sintered heat pipe during flattening process is determined by the saturated vapor pressure equation; the width and vapor area of flattened heat pipe change greatly as the flattening proceeds; the maximum equivalent strain distributes at the interface between wick and vapor in the fiat section; the buckling phenomenon can be well eliminated when the flattening temperature reaches 480 K; phase change flattening punch load increases with flattening temperature and displacement.
