Future Electronics Could "Sweat" Heat Away Thanks to Researchers' Work with Metal-Organic Frameworks

Coating chips and heatsinks in a new material could dramatically reduce operating temperatures — so long as there's moisture in the air.

Gareth Halfacree
4 years agoHW101
A simple, though costly, coating could give future electronics the ability to "sweat." (📷: Wang et al)

When humans get hot, they sweat to regulate their body temperature; now, future electronics could do the same thanks to a new technique for thermal management based on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) — in particular, a material dubbed MIL-101(Cr).

"The development of microelectronics puts great demands on efficient thermal management techniques, because all the components are tightly packed and chips can get really hot," explains senior author Ruzhu Wang, who studies refrigeration engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, of the researcher's inspiration. "For example, without an effective cooling system, our phones could have a system breakdown and burn our hands if we run them for a long time or load a big application."

Rather than adding a fan or increasing the size of the heatsink, Wang and colleagues are attempting to give electronics the ability to "sweat" in the same way as humans — using the MIL-101(Cr) metal-organic framework (MOF), which is able to absorb moisture from the air then release it again when heated.

"Previously, researchers have tried to use MOFs to extract water from the desert air," Wang explains. "But MOFs are still really expensive, so large-scale application isn't really practical. Our study shows electronics cooling is a good real-life application of MOFs. We used less than 0.3 grams of material in our experiment, and the cooling effect it produced was significant.

"In addition to effective cooling, MIL-101(Cr) can quickly recover by absorbing moisture again once the heat source is removed, just like how mammals rehydrate and ready to sweat again. So, this method is really suitable for devices that aren't running all the time, like phones, charging batteries and telecommunications base stations, which can get overloaded sometimes."

Wang and colleagues began by coating aluminium with different thicknesses of MIL-101(Cr), demonstrating that as the thickness increased the time it took to heat the aluminium to 60°C (around 140°F) increased correspondingly — from 5.2 minutes uncoated to 19.35 minutes with just 516 micrometers of the material. The researchers then turned to actual electronics, applying the same coating to a heatsink attached to a microprocessor and finding that it reduced operating temperatures by up to 7°C (around 44.6°F) under heavy workloads.

There are a few more steps to be carried out prior to commercialization, though: The biggest problem lies in the material's reliance on moisture evaporation, switching to an insulating effect once all the moisture has gone — something that could be addressed through conductive additives, Wang suggests.

Another issue is the cost of the material, something that may be addressed by wider applications: "By finding MOFs a practical application," Wang explains, "we hope to increase the market demand for them and encourage more research on MOFs to bring down the costs."

The team's work has been published in the journal Joule under open-access terms.

Gareth Halfacree
Freelance journalist, technical author, hacker, tinkerer, erstwhile sysadmin. For hire: freelance@halfacree.co.uk.
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