New Semiconductor Coolers

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."

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[Alien54]

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)

A fix at the wrong end

[Junks Jerzey]

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.

When cooling fails

[jxqvg]

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!

misleading headline - this GENERATES power

[deander2]

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.