Patent Application
20240147671
The present disclosure relates to the technical field of thermal conductive device, particularly to a thermal conductive device and thermal conductive device manufacturing method, an electrical connector, and an electronic device.
Since electronic devices and connector products generate heat during operation, they are conventionally equipped with thermal conductive devices to conduct generated heat to the outside followed by bringing the heat from the thermal conductive devices through an external cooling device (such as heat sink or cooling fan) so that the thermal conductive device can be continuously conducting heat generated by electronic devices and connector products. Conventional thermal conductivity devices are provided with copper powder sintered internal configuration, which limits the size of the thermal conductive device to make the thermal conductive device unable to be miniaturized for installing in thinned electronic devices and compact size connector products.
The embodiments of the present disclosure provide a thermal conductive device and thermal conductive device manufacturing method, an electrical connector, and an electronic device tended to solve the problem that conventional thermal conductive devices could not be thinned due to the size limitation from the copper powder sintered internal configuration therein.
The present disclosure provides a thermal conductive device, comprising a first housing, a second housing, a capillary mesh component, and a coolant. The second housing is disposed on the first housing. An airtight and vacuumed accommodating space is provided between the first housing and the second housing. The capillary mesh component is disposed in the accommodating space. The capillary mesh component comprises a plurality of capillary pores. The plurality of capillary pores and the accommodating space form a plurality of interconnected circulation channels. The coolant is filled in the accommodating space.
The present disclosure further provides a manufacturing method for a thermal conductive device, comprising: providing a first housing with a first liquid injection cover, a second housing with a second liquid injection cover, a capillary mesh component, and a coolant; disposing the capillary mesh component in an accommodating space between the first housing and the second housing; pressing the first housing fit to the second housing, wherein the first liquid injection cover is connected with the second liquid injection cover, and a liquid injection channel communicating with the accommodating space is provided between the first liquid injection cover and the second liquid injection cover; and closing the liquid injection channel to airtight and vacuum the accommodating space.
The present disclosure further provides an electrical connector, comprising a connector housing and a thermal conductive device according to the above aspects. The thermal conductive device is disposed on an outer surface of the connector housing.
The present disclosure further provides an electronic device, comprising a housing accommodating a heating component and a thermal conductive device according to the above aspects. The thermal conductive device is disposed on the housing and corresponds to the heating component.
In the embodiments of the present disclosure, inside the thermal conductive device, by replacing the copper powder sintered configuration with capillary mesh component, the thermal conductive device would be significantly lighter and thinner than conventional ones for meeting the requirements of miniaturization for being installed into thinned and compact electronic devices and electric connectors. Meanwhile, the thermal conductivity of the thermal conductive device of the present disclosure could be reaching or even superior to that of conventional devices.
It should be understood, however, that this summary may not contain all aspects and embodiments of the present disclosure, that this summary is not meant to be limiting or restrictive in any manner, and that the disclosure as disclosed herein will be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to encompass obvious improvements and modifications thereto.
The features of the exemplary embodiments believed to be novel and the elements and/or the steps characteristic of the exemplary embodiments are set forth with particularity in the appended claims. The Figures are for illustration purposes only and are not drawn to scale. The exemplary embodiments, both as to organization and method of operation, may best be understood by reference to the detailed description which follows taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:
The present disclosure will now be described more fully hereinafter with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which exemplary embodiments of the disclosure are shown. This present disclosure may, however, be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the embodiments set forth herein. Rather, these embodiments are provided so that this present disclosure will be thorough and complete, and will fully convey the scope of the present disclosure to those skilled in the art.
Certain terms are used throughout the description and following claims to refer to particular components. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, manufacturers may refer to a component by different names. This document does not intend to distinguish between components that differ in name but function. In the following description and in the claims, the terms “include/including” and “comprise/comprising” are used in an open-ended fashion, and thus should be interpreted as “including but not limited to”. “Substantial/substantially” means, within an acceptable error range, the person skilled in the art may solve the technical problem in a certain error range to achieve the basic technical effect.
The following description is of the best-contemplated mode of carrying out the disclosure. This description is made for the purpose of illustration of the general principles of the disclosure and should not be taken in a limiting sense. The scope of the disclosure is best determined by reference to the appended claims.
Moreover, the terms “include”, “contain”, and any variation thereof are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion. Therefore, a process, method, object, or device that includes a series of elements not only includes these elements, but also includes other elements not specified expressly, or may include inherent elements of the process, method, object, or device. If no more limitations are made, an element limited by “include a/an . . . ” does not exclude other same elements existing in the process, the method, the article, or the device which includes the element.
In this embodiment, when the thermal conductive device 1 is in use, the accommodating space 12 is airtight and vacuumed. The first housing 10 is configured as a heated side, and the second housing 11 is configured as a cooling side. The first housing 10 is heated to cause the coolant 14 to fill in the accommodating space 12 to absorb heat. The heat absorbed coolant 14 is converted to the gas phase of heat-absorbed steam from the liquid phase. The heat-absorbed steam flows to and contacts with the second housing 11, which is the cooling side, thereby the heat-absorbed steam in the gas phase is again condensed into the liquid phase coolant 14. The coolant 14 at the cooling side flows back to the first housing 10, which is the heated side so that the coolant 14 in the thermal conductive device 1 could continuously convert from liquid phase to gas phase then back to liquid phase to perform heat exchange for the purpose of heat conduction. In this embodiment, the first housing 10 could be the heated side, and the second housing 11 could be the cooling side.
In this embodiment, the capillary mesh component 13 comprises only a single layer of the first capillary mesh 131. When the first capillary mesh 131 is in contact with an inner surface of the first housing 10 and is distant from the second housing 11, the first capillary mesh 131 would comprise a plurality of first capillary pores 1311. The plurality of first capillary pores 1311 and the accommodating space 12 form a plurality of interconnected circulation channels, which increase the contact area between the first capillary mesh 131 and the coolant 14. In this way, a large amount of coolant 14 could be converted into heat-absorbed steam considerably, which accelerates the heat absorption and evaporation for the coolant 14. When the first capillary mesh 131 is in contact with an inner surface of the second housing 11 and is distant from the first housing 10, the contact area between the first capillary mesh 131 and the coolant 14 converted from heat-absorbed steam can be increased. In this way, not only can the heat of the heat-absorbed steam be quickly diffused and distributed throughout the second housing 11 to uniform the heat, but external coolings could also bring the heat from on the second housing 11 at a time. Meanwhile, when the heat in a large amount of heat-absorbed steam of the second housing 11 is brought away, a large amount of liquid coolant 14 would be condensed. The large amount of coolant 14 is guided to flow along the inner surface of the second housing 11 toward a sidewall of the accommodating space 12, then along which to flow toward the first housing 10 which is the heated side. The circulation channel refers to when the heat-absorbed steam flows from one side of the accommodating space 12 close to the heated side toward the cooling side, it would pass through the plurality of interconnected first capillary pores 1311 in the first capillary mesh 131 and arrives at the cooling side, and the heat-absorbed steam would be condensed into the coolant 14. The coolant 14 then flows from one side of the accommodating space 12 close to the cooling side toward the heated side and then returns to the heated side through the plurality of interconnected first capillary pores 1311 of the first capillary mesh 131.
Thus, in this embodiment, the heat conduction efficiency of the thermal conductive device 1 can be increased as the first capillary mesh 131 is disposed at any position. The first capillary mesh 131 is in contact with the inner surface of the second housing 11 and is distant from the first housing 10. It is worth mentioning that the first capillary pore 1311 described in this embodiment could also be configured to be circular, rectangular and/or polygonal. Besides, the first capillary mesh 131 can be a fiber type mesh, a woven type mesh, or a honeycomb type mesh.
In this embodiment, the first housing 10 is a flat plate, and the second housing 11 comprises an accommodating groove 110. When the first housing 10 is connected to the second housing 11, a sidewall around the accommodating groove 110 of the second housing 11 would be firmly connected with the inner surface of the first housing 10, and the space within the accommodating groove 110 is referred to as the accommodating space 12. In this embodiment, the first capillary mesh 131 is disposed on an inner surface of the accommodating groove 110. The second housing 11 could also be a flat plate, and the first housing 10 comprises an accommodating groove. Alternatively, the first housing 10 and the second housing 11 could respectively comprise an accommodating groove.
In this embodiment, inside the thermal conductivity device 1 is installed with the capillary mesh component 13 to replace the conventional copper powder sintered configuration so that the thermal conductive device 1 could be significantly lighter and thinner than conventional ones to be miniaturized for being installed into thinned and compact electronic devices and electric connectors. Meanwhile, the thermal conductivity of the thermal conductive device 1 of this embodiment could be reaching or even superior to that of conventional devices.
In this embodiment, the first housing 10 and the second housing 11 are respectively manufactured by stamping or etching, which are made of high thermal conductivity materials, such as copper, titanium, aluminum, copper alloy, titanium alloy, aluminum alloy, or stainless steel. Referring to
In this embodiment, one ends of the plurality of supporting columns 18 are respectively connected with an inner surface of the first housing 10. The other ends of the plurality of supporting columns 18 abutted against an inner surface of the second housing 11. The plurality of supporting columns 18 are integrally formed with the first housing 10. One ends of the plurality of supporting columns 18 can be respectively connected with the inner surface of the second housing 11, the other ends of the plurality of supporting columns 18 can abut against the inner surface of the first housing 10, and the plurality of supporting columns 18 can be integrally formed with the second housing 11. The plurality of supporting columns 18 can be respectively manufactured, for example, by sintering, and can be installed to the first housing 10 or the second housing 11, practically installed to the inner surface of the first housing 10 or the inner surface of the second housing 11 before step S12 of the foregoing manufacturing method. In this embodiment, the supporting column 18 can be a cylindrical column, and it can also be a triangular column, a quadrangular column, and/or a polygonal column, for example, the plurality of supporting columns 18 can all be cylindrical columns or having a combination of being cylindrical column and quadrangular column. The supporting column 18 can be made of high thermal conductivity materials, such as copper, titanium, aluminum, copper alloy, titanium alloy, aluminum alloy, or stainless steel.
In this embodiment, the plurality of supporting columns 18 could penetrate the capillary mesh component 13. In this embodiment, the first capillary mesh 131 comprises a plurality of first through holes 1313. When the first capillary mesh 131 is disposed on the inner surface of the second housing 11 and the second housing 11 is disposed on the first housing 10, the plurality of supporting columns 18 would pass through the plurality of first through holes 1313 of the first capillary mesh 131, so that the plurality of supporting columns 18 would be in contact with the inner surface of the second housing 11.
By disposing the second capillary mesh 132 on the first housing 10 to increase the contact area between the second capillary mesh 132 and the coolant 14, a large amount of heat-absorbed coolant 14 can be guided and converted into heat-absorbed steam to speed up the heat-absorbed and vaporizing of the coolant 14. By disposing the first capillary mesh 131 on the second housing 11 to increase the contact area between the first capillary mesh 131 and the heat-absorbed steam and the coolant 14 converted from the heat-absorbed steam. In this way, not only can the heat of the heat-absorbed steam be quickly diffused and distributed throughout the second housing 11 to uniform the heat, but external coolings could also bring the heat from on the second housing 11 at a time. Meanwhile, when the heat of a large amount of heat-absorbed steam of the second housing 11 is brought away, a large amount of liquid coolant 14 would be condensed. The large amount of coolant 14 is guided to flow along an inner surface of the second housing 11 toward a sidewall of the accommodating space 12, then along which to flow toward the first housing 10 which is the heated side. Since the weaving density of the first capillary mesh 131 is lower than that of the second capillary mesh 132, the heat-absorbed steam could be quickly diffused and distributed to the second housing 11, and the condensed coolant 14 could quickly flow back to the first housing 10 which is the heated side. The above is only an embodiment of the present disclosure. The capillary mesh component 13 could include a single layer capillary mesh, a double layer capillary mesh, or a triple or more than three layer capillary mesh. The first capillary mesh 131 and the second capillary mesh 132 could be a fiber type mesh, a woven type mesh, or a honeycomb type meshed, which should not be limited thereto.
The present disclosure further provides an electronic device, comprising a housing and a thermal conductive device of the above embodiments. The housing accommodates a heating component, and the heat conductive device is disposed at the housing and is connected with the heating component. The thermal conductive device could quickly conduct the heat generated by the heating component of the electronic device to the outside, avoiding the heat from accumulating in the electronic device. A heat sink, a cooling fan, or other heat dissipating components can also be disposed above the thermal conductive device to conduct the heat of the thermal conductive device as soon as possible so that the thermal conductive device could continuously conduct the heat out from the electronic device. In this embodiment, electronic devices refer to those internally installed with heating components, particularly those applied for the field of servers, communications, consumer electronics, and other industries; the electronic devices could be, for example, a data center, server, router, supercomputer, artificial intelligence device, communication station, Intermesh of Things system, game console, laptop, mobile phone, computer, drone, projector, television, medical equipment, robot, inverter, or wind power converter.
In summary, embodiments of the present disclosure provide a thermal conductive device and thermal conductive device manufacturing method, an electrical connector, and an electronic device. Inside the thermal conductive device, by replacing the copper powder sintered configuration with a capillary mesh component, the thermal conductive device would be significantly lighter and thinner than conventional ones for meeting the requirements of miniaturization for being installed into thinned and compact electronic devices and electric connectors. Meanwhile, the thermal conductivity of the thermal conductive device of the present disclosure could be reaching or even superior to that of conventional devices.
It is to be understood that the term “comprises”, “comprising”, or any other variants thereof, is intended to encompass a non-exclusive inclusion, such that a process, method, article, or device of a series of elements not only comprise those elements but further comprises other elements that are not explicitly listed, or elements that are inherent to such a process, method, article, or device. An element defined by the phrase “comprising a . . . ” does not exclude the presence of the same element in the process, method, article, or device that comprises the element.
Although the present disclosure has been explained in relation to its preferred embodiment, it does not intend to limit the present disclosure. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art having regard to this present disclosure that other modifications of the exemplary embodiments beyond those embodiments specifically described here may be made without departing from the spirit of the disclosure. Accordingly, such modifications are considered within the scope of the disclosure as limited solely by the appended claims.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 202110775337.X | Jul 2021 | CN | national |
This application is a Divisional Application of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 17/512,159, filed on Oct. 27, 2021, which claims the priority benefit of Chinese Patent Application Serial Number 202110775337.X, filed on Jul. 8, 2021. These and all other referenced extrinsic materials are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 17512159 | Oct 2021 | US |
| Child | 18405410 | US |
