Better thermal management promises cheaper, greener, cooler electronics

The demonstrator photo (provided by FOAB) shows the micro-cooler
device is running, and thermal energy is taken away by the coolant
flowing through the micro channels. @ Yifeng Fu
< strong> At first glance, supercomputers, car parts,
entertainment systems and radar antennas may not have much in
common, but they all stand to benefit from important advances in
thermal management technology being achieved by an EU-funded
project. Materials developed under the project have been
demonstrated in different application sectors, and some are already
in use commercially, or likely to be in the near
future.
Improving thermal management is essential if processing
power is to continue increasing as electronic components get
ever smaller. Too much heat that can be managed effectively puts
limits on the performance of chips and other microelectronic
components, it reduces reliability, and it
also costs money and harms the environment.
A prime example of the problem from a technical, environmental
and economic perspective are data centres. These vast buildings –
sometimes spreading across the equivalent of several football
pitches – are used by a variety of industries to store and process < br /> data. The banks of computers inside them produce a lot of heat. So
much in fact that around half the cost of building a new data
centre goes on the cooling system, which in turn requires more
energy to operate, resulting in a large carbon
footprint.
The same problems are true in any industry that uses
microelectronics – from telecommunications to aviation. Hence
demand for a better solution is intense. In Europe, companies such
as Thales, Bosch and IBM have joined up with research institutes
and universities, obtaining funding from the European Commission to
try to develop new materials and
processes to solve the thermal management
issue.
Their efforts in the ano packaging technology for interconnect
and heat dissipation (Nanopack) project have resulted in
new hermal interface materials (TIMs) developed with micro-and
nanotechnology to greatly increase heat transfer away from chips
and other electronic
components, in turn reducing the demands placed on cooling
systems, lowering costs and reducing energy consumption. The
materials have been showcased in a series of demonstrators with
applications across a variety of sectors, some of which are in use
commercially or are likely to be in the near
future.
t Thales, we build radar systems for airplanes. Thermal issues
are especially important in that environment because the space
available is very small and very confined. At present, the cost of
the thermal architecture of the radar is something like 40% of the
total cost, ays Afshin Ziaei, a manager of research at Thales
Research