The gadgets we carry in our pockets and bags are becoming ever more powerful. But to achieve that performance manufacturers keep increasing the clock speed and number of cores in the processors. The side effect? Heat. The latest device to suffer from a noticeable increase in heat is the new iPad, but it is far from being a major issue.
Research being carried out at the North Carolina State University looks like it may solve the heat issue in the short term, while at the same time cutting the cost of managing heat in a device.
In order to draw heat away from hot-running chips some form of heat sink is employed. Typically his is a metal object, with copper being one of the best conductors and therefore a popular choice. What Dr. Jag Kasichainula of NC State discovered, is that he can increase thermal conductivity by replacing a pure copper solution with a copper-graphene composite.
The composite is attached using an indium-graphene film and testing has shown the thermal conductivity of this solution is 25 percent higher than copper alone. At the same time it proves a cheaper option because it requires less copper.
The new composite takes the form of a film when combined with the indium-graphene. In order to see the improvements in conductivity over pure copper this film has to be at last 200 micrometres thick, but that’s good news too considering a micrometre is only one-thousandth of a millimeter. In other words, there will be no problem adding such a thin film to super-thin devices such as smartphones and tablets.
The research is focusing on better dissipation of thermal energy in such devices as power amplifiers and laser diodes. However, if the thermal conductivity is much higher than copper, I can see this film being used in consumer devices as we move to ever more powerful components.
Read more at North Carolina State University and SpringerLink, via Engadget
