EPI Engineers Advance Thermal Management with Embedded Flat Heat Pipes

Newburyport, Massachusetts Dec 19, 2025 (EMWNews.com) – Engineers from Electronic Products Industries, Inc. (EPI) – Chuck Mead, David Ross, and Chris Mosher have collaborated with researchers C. Chhokar, Milad Ebadi, and Majid Bahrami to publish a notable new study titled “Development of a flat heat pipe embedded in a near-millimeter thick ceramic electronics substrate.” The research introduces a novel flat heat pipe integrated directly into a thin ceramic electronics substrate, marking a significant advancement in thermal-management technology.

Ultra-Thin Ceramic Substrate with Embedded Heat Pipe

The research presents, for the first time to the authors’ knowledge, a monolithic hightemperature ceramic flat heat pipe device featuring integrated micro-wick structures embedded within a ceramic electronics substrate.

Key Technical Highlights & Performance

• The device uses tape-casting (or thin substrate fabrication) of a ceramic substrate incorporating the heat pipe structure.
• The overall thickness is approximately 1.3 mm for the substrate with the embedded heat pipe, less than half the thickness of previously reported ceramic heat pipes.
• The substrate footprint is 51 mm — 127 mm.
• The study reports very high effective thermal conductivities depending on orientation: 566 W m¹ K¹ in antigravity orientation, 2,182 W m¹ K¹ when horizontal, and 8,392 W m¹ K¹ in gravity-assisted orientation.
• The working fluid used in the heat pipe is water.
• Because of the thin ceramic substrate integration, the authors highlight both weight savings and packaging potential compared to conventional copper-based heat spreaders or heat pipes.

About Electronic Products Industries (EPI)

Electronic Products Industries (EPI), a Douglas Electrical Components Company, is a leading U.S. manufacturer of hermetic microelectronic packages for high-reliability applications. EPI specializes in TO packages and headers, RF & microwave packages, optoelectronic packages, and power discrete packages, using advanced glass-to-metal sealing and HTCC technologies.