Portable computing devices (e.g., laptops, personal/enterprise digital assistants, smartphones, tablet computers, ultra-mobile computers, wearable computers, etc.) have become ubiquitous at least in part because they are increasingly more affordable and yet more powerful.
Newer portable computing device designs (e.g., ultrathin laptops, ultra slim smartphones, etc.) are directed toward making the devices thinner in size and lighter in weight so that consumers can easily carry them around and hold to operate. Even though the newer computing devices may have smaller form factors and smaller enclosure sizes than older versions of the devices, they can include powerful computer chips (e.g., microprocessors, RAM, etc.) that generate the same or more heat than the computer chips used in older or larger enclosure-size versions of the computing devices. Traditional heat or thermal management solutions for computing devices generally address the challenge of avoiding temporary malfunction or permanent failure of components (e.g., CPUs, chipset, graphic cards, and storage devices, etc.) due to overheating of semiconductor junction temperatures (e.g., above 100° C.). The traditional heat or thermal management solutions avoid overheating of the device components by extracting and expelling heat from the computing device enclosures, for example, by exhausting hot air from the enclosures or using heat pumps. Additionally, the traditional heat or thermal management solutions may avoid overheating of the device components by throttling performance of heat-generating device components. For the newer smaller enclosure-size or smaller form factor computing devices, a further thermal challenge is ergonomic: maintaining external enclosure temperatures at safe levels so that users can touch or handle operational computing devices without discomfort or injury.
Consideration is now being given heat or thermal management solutions for keeping computing device enclosure surface temperatures in a safe and comfortable range for human contact or touch.