In a recent publication, American scientists claimed to have found a revolutionary way to combat one of the most limiting factors when it comes to increasing the power of our devices and other processors: heat.
Much more current without danger
Modern electronics have several “enemies”, one of which is heat. This is a very restrictive limit in the context of the evolution of devices in terms of power or even progress towards more miniaturization. Nevertheless, researchers from the universities of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and California at Berkeley (USA) believe they have found the solution.
Scientists have indeed published a study in the journal Nature Electronics where they explain that it is possible to pass much more current in the same unit while avoiding grilling it. This innovation is not trivial since it is a question of 740% additional current.
A theoretical revolution to be confirmed
Remember that progress in terms of cooling electronics faces three major problems. First of all, the price of the materials of the most advanced solutions, including diamond, can be very expensive and therefore synonymous with difficulties regarding mass production. In addition, heat sinks are placed above the processor (or circuit) to be cooled. However, most of the heat is below, so it is theoretically possible to gain in efficiency. Hardware enthusiasts also know it very well: you have to use thermal paste to make the link between the circuit and its heatsink. However, this paste does not really allow the evolution of performance.
The researchers’ solution is based on thin layers of parylene and copper. Contrary to what is available today, the circuit or the processor to be cooled is here covered on all sides by this new device which completely does without thermal paste. Thus, the circuit and the heat sink are one and this connection allows optimal performance, even in the event of miniaturization of the components.
Scientists have thus claimed to have succeeded in passing 740% more current in a circuit, or 7.4 times more than usual. On paper, this innovation represents a real revolution. However, the future will tell us if the production chains will really be able to integrate it and if it will be interesting to use it in the consumer electronics of tomorrow.
