BIOGRAPHY
Lilla Smith received her B.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering at Union College, Schenectady, NY in 2011. She worked with Prof. Bruno on Micro-Particle Image Velocimetry (uPIV) of small fluid flows. Her interests are in Fluid Mechanics, Heat Transfer and MEMS fabrication. She is currently working on the Micro-Columnated Loop Heat Pipe (ucLHP) cooling chip under a DARPA contract.

QES: Micro LHP Chip Cooling System - Evaporator Design and Testing [BPN660]
The micro scale loop heat pipe (Micro-LHP) is an ongoing research project dedicated to the design
and testing of a new cooling system for thermal management of high-power electronics. One of the
key technological innovations of the overall Micro-LHP project is the use of a columnated vapor
chamber (CVC) leading to a micro-patterned surface intended to maximize evaporation. The micro-
patterning, commonly used in micro heat pipes, is the main focus of this evaporator study. The
purpose of this research is to translate previous work, on surface roughness, into a new method of
spreading liquid along the evaporator. The optimal design will create a large interline evaporation
region, which is expected to increase the thermal conductivity of the device. The future results
will detail both the function of the evaporator and the effect of different roughness patterning on
the thermal conductivity of the evaporator region. Detailed here are evaporator designs,
fabrication progress, experimental set up, measurement techniques and future plans.