Flexible, Gravity-Fed Heat Pipe

The advent of cryocooler technology ushers in an era where a cryogenic environment is created and maintained locally. It is no longer necessary to transport cryogen from a factory where it is produced to the location where it is needed. One problem remains for cooling large cryogenic systems with cryocoolers that extract more than 50 W of power. Although high-capacity cryocoolers are available from several commercial sources, the thermal link for connecting the cryocooler to a large system is not yet available. For small systems requiring less heat extraction, flexible heat straps made of braided copper wires are available for the thermal link. For heat extraction of more than 50 W at −100 K, this type of heat strap cannot be made short enough and flexible enough.