Wicking Study of Nanostructured Titania Surfaces for Flat Heat Pipes

We report a wicking material based on nanostructured TiO2 (NST) for the application of flat heat pipes. Heat pipes adopt wicking materials to achieve some unique functions that thermal siphons could not achieve[1], and they have found their applications as cooling systems in a wide variety of areas such as spacecraft and electronics. Different kinds of materials such as carbon nanotubes[2], nanowires[3], sintered copper[4], and micromachined channels[5, 6] have been investigated for micro heat pipes for their wicking functions. Based on titanium micromachining and surface modification techniques, we fabricated an array of pillars which carry nano/micro textured surface Our study shows that water can completely wet this nano/micro textured surface, and it’s wetting behavior on this surface follows the famous Washburn equation.