Many of us at ATS Thermal Labs are on the continued quest to continue to extend air only solutions for the thermal management of electronics. We’ve invented some remarkable solutions to keep using air mainly because customer’s want it. No one wants to use liquid cooling in their electronic systems if they don’t have to. Such innovations as maxiFLOWTM heat sinks and superGRIPTM heat sink clips that allows phase change thermal interface material to work optimally, were driven by our customer’s demands to keep cooling with air. Soon there may be another tool for the thermal engineer to use: nanoscale coating.
As reported in EE Times:
Nanoscale coatings could boost the efficiency with which heat can be removed from semiconductors and other devices, according to an Army Research Laboratory funded study by researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Oregon State University (OSU).
The industry has known about nano-cooling for some time of course. Including Intel’s invention of integrating circuits with carbon nano-tubes to enhance thermal management. But nanoscale coating might provide up to a 10x improvement in heat transfer coefficient. Pretty remarkable cooling and one our team is happy to see develop. You can read all about it at EE Times at their article, “Nano-coating cools chips four times faster“.