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New Semiconductor Coolers

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the now-that's-a-lotta-cooling dept.

An anonymous reader writes: "A new thermoelectric material is 2.4X as efficient as best existing materials. The new solid state heat pumps can provide 700 watts of cooling (nearly one horsepower) with just one square centimeter. These new materials have the potential to replace current heat sinks, thermoelectric generators and mechanical heat pumps. You can also read an article in nature."

8 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. In one word... by codeButcher · · Score: 4, Funny

    cool!

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  2. NPR information by queequeg1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    There was a brief bit on NPR about this a few days ago. NPR recording

  3. Can we get rid of the fan though? by hattig · · Score: 4, Insightful
    With a suitably sized heatsink made of this material, can we get rid of the noisy fan, or at least replace it with a slower, quieter fan.

    This would be great for those of us with 1.4GHz Athlons rumbling away in the corner.

    I expect that it will start of as some kind of heat spreader material on CPUs themselves, and possibly in the base plate of the heatsink. It is probably very expensive.

    Itanium will need a tonne of the stuff... :)

    1. Re:Can we get rid of the fan though? by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful
      With a suitably sized heatsink made of this material, can we get rid of the noisy fan, or at least replace it with a slower, quieter fan.

      You're missing the point; We don't make heat sinks out of peltier junctions, we put them on top of peltier junctions. In order to keep the heat sink cool, we put a fan on them.

      In other words, we will never make heat sinks out of this material. We'll simply transfer heat to them with it. Current heat sinks work fine.

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  4. More Links by Alien54 · · Score: 5, Informative
    On the nature site, they also have full text with all the gory scientific details, and a PDF.

    a couple of them in fact. (look to the bottom of the page)

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  5. A fix at the wrong end by Junks+Jerzey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    While this is neat and all, I should hope that more effort goes into lower power consumption in general. Just because there's a better way to cool high-power chips doesn't mean that such a chips are a good idea in the first place.

    Someone I know who works in embedded systems recently pointed out that most CPU makers have decided to chase performance at all cost without regard to power consumption, and this is leaving embedded systems engineers up a creek.

  6. When cooling fails by jxqvg · · Score: 5, Funny

    These things are going to get so efficient and semiconductors running so hot that when one of them fails the whole thing will go critical mass. Your box won't just fail, it'll burst into flames and melt into a useless bubbling pool of metal and plastic!

  7. misleading headline - this GENERATES power by deander2 · · Score: 5, Insightful


    The body of this news item is misleading. This material can GENERATE 700 watts of electricity from only one square cm. (specifically under a 58 degree F tempature gradient).

    It can also heat and cool things 2.5x more efficiently (then anything else on the market) if you push electrons through it, rather than let them come out.

    Very interesting stuff, IMHO. Generating electricity from waste heat with inexpensive materials is a holy grail of sorts in a LOT of applications.

    BTW, this is what the patent system was SUPPOSED to protect. True innovation.

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