Ultra Efficient Chip Cooling Passes Boeing Tests

joelgrimes writes "A company called Cool Chips plc is showing off a cooling device that claims unbelievable efficiencies using what they call 'quantum mechanical electron tunneling'. A choice quote from their press release: "A panel of Cool Chips one inch square will provide enough cooling for a refrigerator; a panel about two inches square will have the capacity to provide the air conditioning for a living room". They also mention using them to cool microprocessors. I used to think this company was nuts, but Boeing is making me think twice. Oh, and by the way, they work in reverse to make electricity from heat. Should I sell my baseball cards and buy their stock now, or can an army of slashdotters poke holes in their claims?" Fascinating stuff. Makes peltier coolers look pretty old school. In the press release they claim up to 80% efficiency, compared to 5-8% for peltier coolers and 50% for conventional refrigeration. I will say the cool chips corporate logo is baffling, though.

Comments

Slashdotted already?

[joshki]

COOL CHIPS DISCLOSES APPLICATION OF QUANTUM MECHANICS IN HIGH-EFFICIENCY NANOTECH COOLING DEVICES
Refers to COLCF and BOREF

Cool Chips plc
Gibraltar
14 May 2002

Cool Chips plc (COLCF) said that its Cool Chips(tm), wafer-thin discs designed to produce cooling or refrigeration more efficiently than any competing technology, use quantum mechanical electron tunneling as the primary cooling mechanism. The Cool Chip is one of the first transformative technologies to emerge from the nanotechnology revolution.

The Cool Chip technology could eventually replace nearly every existing form of cooling, air conditioning, and thermal management. Prototype devices are being shown publicly for the first time at the Nanotech Planet Conference in San Jose, California, that begins today. The company has not previously disclosed the full scientific basis for its technology.

Because of the inherent advantages in cooling across a gap using electron tunneling, Cool Chips are projected to attain efficiencies much higher than those previously available in cooling systems, and they are much less than 10% of the size and weight of compressors. Cool Chips are modular, and can be packaged in arrays to cool virtually any size heat load.

The company expects its Cool Chip(tm) technology, which has been in development since 1994, to replace all thermoelectrics and compressors for cooling, in applications ranging from electronics and infrared sensors, to computer components, refrigeration, and air conditioning. Cool Chips are on target to have an overwhelming cost advantage.

Cool Chips will enable many new and improved consumer products. They will enable laptops to run cooler, for example, and make possible in-car soda and grocery coolers. A panel of Cool Chips one inch square will provide enough cooling for a refrigerator; a panel about two inches square will have the capacity to provide the air conditioning for a living room; and a panel about five inches square will supply enough cooling power to cool an entire house.

Most existing cooling systems use compressors and environment-damaging fluids and are 40-50% efficient. Smaller thermoelectric cooling devices, despite more than $1 billion spent on research, are only 8% efficient. Cool Chips are projected to operate at 70-80% of the maximum theoretical efficiency (Carnot) for cooling.

Cool Chips prototypes are small electronic devices similar in appearance to computer chips. When an electric current is applied, one side of the chip will become cold and the other side hot, as electrons "tunnel" across a 1-to-10 nanometre gap separating the two sides, carrying heat with them. Innate device advantages include high efficiency, solid-state design, silent operation, environmentally friendly materials and operation, and compact size for easy integration.

"We have demonstrated the capability to make multiple prototypes that show a tunneling current in excess of 10 amps, using a wafer area approximately 9 square cm in area," said Isaiah Cox, Cool Chips' president. "This is, by far, the largest tunneling current that has ever been reported across a gap, and we expect Cool Chips to make the first use of this quantum tunneling effect in a primary commercial application."

The tunneling current can be harnessed to provide cooling of very high density. The theoretical heat flux for flat electrodes suspended 50 Angstroms from each other is on the order of 5000 watts per square centimetre. Cool Chips(tm) will be more than adequate for cooling the next generation of microprocessors, which will produce upwards of 100 watts of heat per square centimetre.

Cool Chips are currently in development, and it is expected to take over a year to complete prototypes which demonstrate high output and efficiency. Current prototypes are being used to increase the quantum tunneling, and cooling has not been directly measured to date. Once the tunneling output has been increased to a certain level, our scientists intend to begin increasing cooling output.

An IV curve and other information is now available on the Cool Chips website at http://www.coolchips.gi.

The Cool Chips technology is protected by an extensive patent portfolio. This coverage extends to include a broad array of techniques related to this unique thermal management system, which offers solutions for nearly any thermal management application.

Cool Chips plc, based in Gibraltar, is a majority-owned subsidiary of Borealis Exploration Limited (BOREF) and has 7,281,785 shares outstanding. Borealis' business is reinventing the core technologies used by basic industries, including electric motors, steelmaking, electrical power generation, and cooling and thermal management.

For further information contact:

Chris Bourne
Director of Public Relations
Cool Chips plc
+44 20 8571 5216
pr@coolchips.gi

Forward Looking Statement at http://www.coolchips.gi/fwdlook.shtml

Solar energy too

[bleeeeck]

The company is also making solar collectors the same way.

From http://www.borealis.com/technology/patents.shtml:

Patent 5981866(StampPE)
PROCESS FOR STAMPABLE PHOTOELECTRIC GENERATOR
Abstract
Manufacture of a photoelectric converter by a photolithographic or stamping process prior to coating with a photoelectrically emissive material is described. This gives an economic and simple means of mass-producing photoelectric converter cells, and in one aspect is analogous to that used for pressing optical discs.

Hmm..Look at this

[justinstreufert]

I was just about to buy a million billion shares when I noticed this:

...cooling has not been directly measured to date. Once the tunneling output has been increased to a certain level, our scientists intend to begin increasing cooling output.

Cooling not yet measured? So, the device works in theory, but there might be an unanticipated roadblock ahead which significantly delays or hinders their ability to produce devices that actually cool something. :/

Justin

right of first refusal

[EggDye]

No, it isn't that sinister a concept.

Right of first refusal means that you get a chance to buy something before anyone else does. It is the business equivalent to the concept of having "dibs" on something.

It also does not represent too great a risk on Boeing's part. They aren't obligated to buy this technology. They just have the chance to buy it before anyone else does. While they are certainly paying for this privilege in some manner (maybe the press release is the payment), they aren't jumping in with both feet.

Re:Cold spot/hot spot

[The Cookie Monster]

You still have *exactly* the same problem than rigth now: how do I remove that heat from the colding system? It is still one square inch

No, the heat dissipated is proportional to the difference in the temperature between the hot thing and the cold thing, and with one of these chips you can make the hot surface hotter, thus dissipating more heat.

If the heatsink on the hot side of the coolchip isn't radiating as much heat as the CPU is producing then (assuming the coolchips heat pumping properties work) the hot side of the coolchip will keep getting hotter until the radiation of the heatsink matches the heat output by the CPU. You argument would work if the coolchip was just an excellent conductor of heat, but it's a heat pump - it can shift heat from a side that is cool to a side that is hotter than the side the heat came from.

how much air you can pass over an square inch on a time unit, given the fact it has to be in countach with the refrigerator unit time enough to transfer that heat to it

This is what heatsinks are for, a 1 inch cube heatsink can have a huge surface area (which air is then blown through), and there's no reason to stick to one cubic inch, the heatsync can be much larger than the coolchip provided it can conduct the heat sufficently to all it's tiny fins. If two coolchips can actually do the heat pumping work of an air conditioner, then transferring that into the actual air should be no trickier than with conventional aircon units.

Why this is bullsh*t...

[s390]

They claim to have invented a highly efficient (~80%) Peltier device ("CoolChip") using "quantum electronic tunneling" across a near-perfect temperature insulating "gap" of nanoscale width. They claim heat-transfer capabilities on the order of 500w/cm**2 (theoretically, but there aren't any _measurements_ yet, that they have, er... published).

It's difficult to attack these claims, simply because they haven't _explained_ the physics or materials or construction beyond trendy buzzwords and, by the way, they seem not to have actually _built_ any devices. This is typical of bunco artists hyping seemingly wonderful new technology. See all the "zero point energy" hucksters, for example.

However, a little common-sense physics is enough to demolish this scam. I'd like to hear their answers to the following questions and objections. But, I bet they won't do it.

There is no such thing as a near-perfect (or even really good) temperature insulating solid material - the only pretty good temperature insulation is... a vacuum. Any decent vacuum over a nano-scale gap is going to close the gap, real quick (especially if there is the strong electroforce attraction between negative and positive semiconductors helping); that's Strike One.

Such a Peltier-like device has to work by pumping electrons into the cold side and removing them from the hot side. But injecting electrons into the cold side _excites_ the existing n-doped semiconductor's electron-states, and it's only the rapid migration of those excited electrons away from that layer that removes heat (and the device has to pull away unbound electrons marginally faster than they are injected to provide cooling). It's impossible to extract more electrons than are added without entirely stripping the substrate eventually, and long before that happened you'd see _reverse_ tunneling of electrons into the very depleted cold substrate; here's Strike Two.

Then there's the claimed energy transfer. At the rate of 500w/cm**2, the hot substrate is going to start generating _photons_ (which have no charge, so they're not going to be bashful about moving _back_ across the "insulating" gap) and they will carry... heat; ergo, Strike Three.

Sure, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" [A.C. Clarke], and great technological leaps are desireable. But the only "magic" these people have in mind is moving significant amounts of money from scientifically naive, greedy, and gullible investors into their own pockets. But, it were ever thus: caveat emptor.

Not 70-80% efficiency!

[MarvinMouse]

70-80% of the maximum theoretical efficiency (Carnot) for cooling.

Just so everyone is aware, in thermodynamics the Carnot engine is not a 100% efficient engine. Actually, depending on a few variables, the carnot engine can be incredibly inefficient.

Stating that the efficiency is 70-80% of the maximum theoretical efficient (Carnot engine) for cooling doesn't mean that much, since it doesn't fit the equation we all think about.

70-80% = Energy Out/Energy In

Instead we get

70-80% = Energy Out/(Energy In * Carnot Efficiency)

Since |Carnot Efficiency| 1, we end up with a artificial increase in the actual efficiency of the engine.

I would personally like to see the results of the actual efficiency, not this skewed statistic.

.....Marvin Mouse.....
(Math, CS, Physics, Psychology Undergrad)

Extraordinary claims

[sam_handelman]

require extraordinary wads of cash money.

As experience has shown - suckering a major company with X does not mean X is true.

That said, actually, I believe this could work. The "efficiency" claim, however, is somewhat bogus. Quoth their webpage:
to a projected 70-80% of the maximum (Carnot) theoretical efficiency for heat pumps. Conventional refrigerators operate at up to 50% efficiency and current thermoelectric systems (Peltier Effect) operate at 5-8% efficiency.

The Carnot efficiency is not 100%; it is (Th-Tc)/Th x 100%. Th is the temp of "hot" half of the engine cycle and Tc is the cold. Both are in kelvin. So, if your car engine runs at 400K (boiling water) on the compression stroke and 300K (freezing water) on the expansion stroke the maximum efficiency you can theoretically get is 25%.

Now, they seem to be comparing the percentage-of-theoretical efficiency that their device gets with the actual efficiency of other devices. The upshot is that I believe refrigerators also run at about 80-90% of the Carnot efficiency, which is 50% actual efficiency, but I might be making a mistake.

I suppose this maps somehow to a total kinetic energy operator for the individual electrons they are moving (1 minute chemistry - heat is "thermal motion", the degree to which particles are bouncing around. Every "observable" feature of a particle - position, kinetic energy, momentum, and so on - is actually "random", and is related to the "wave function" of the particle, which is a function that tells you the probability of finding the particle at any given position, by an operator, the position operator is the number 1, which is itself a function that maps from a set of algebraic functions to a set of algebraic functions. The math for these operators is hoary as all hell, not analytically soluble, and they can generally only be dealt with pproximately/computationally.)

Clearly - and I'm talking about the second law of thermodynamics, here - they can't actually convert environmental heat into an electrical potential. A heat differential, on the other hand, could very well be done, so they might be usable (in the long run) as a way to generate electricity while venting waste heat from nuclear reactors and the like.