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Silent Microchip 'Fan' Has No Moving Parts
Stony Stevenson writes "Researchers in the US have developed a microchip fan with no moving parts that operates silently and generates enough wind to cool a laptop computer. The solid-state fan, developed with support from the US National Science Foundation (NSF), is touted as the most powerful and energy efficient fan of its size. The device produces three times the flow rate of a typical small mechanical fan and is one-fourth the size. The technology has the power to cool a 25W chip with a device smaller than one cubic-cm and can someday be integrated into silicon to make self-cooling chips, according to the researchers."
To find out how it works?
Fuck you.
He explained that RSD5 incorporates a series of live wires that generate a micro-scale plasma (an ion-rich gas that has free electrons that conduct electricity).
The wires lie within uncharged conducting plates that are contoured into half-cylindrical shapes to partially envelop the wires.
Within the intense electric field that results, ions push neutral air molecules from the wire to the plate, generating a wind. The phenomenon is called corona wind.
Just when you thought anti-gravity was dead for good. Hey, at least this thing sounds like it will work as advertised...
.. using ionic winds to cool the CPU isn't a new idea:
http://inventgeek.com/Projects/IonCooler3/overview.aspx
I'm sure by now someone has said "Cool!"
So this thing works similar to an ion drive. A stream of ions from one wire to another drags the surrounding air with it, generating wind. The last entry here has a good graphic.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
http://inventgeek.com/Projects/IonCooler/Overview.aspx
...until someone tags this whatcouldpossiblygowrong.
The TR list discussed here, that is: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/12/176227
This I can see as having many applications, including those rather warm MacBookAirs ;-)
The Mothership
If it is 3 times "stronger", at 1/4th the size, why not say it is 12 times as efficient as a conventional fan?
Just in time for Room-Temperature Superconductors! Oh monkeytrumpets.
But seriously, it sounds pretty... cool... and the article suggests that it uses plasma on extremely small scale, which is also pretty nifty. My concern would be dust. Every laptop I've had turns into a dustbuster that continuously cleans my desk. Unfortunately the collection cup (the fan and ducting) isn't easily removable. Maybe just use two of them in series but configure the first as an Ionic Breeze? Isn't that essentially what this thing is anyway? If it is, I don't know how the Ionic Breeze descriptions managed to omit the word PLASMA in their Sharper Image ads.
I would definitely consider this for a low-noise workstation setup, assuming it scaled properly. Probably wouldn't provide enough cooling power for the beefier processors, but I bet it could be adapted for a mid-range desktop machine. Silence is golden.
Yeah, I know, there's so much more you could do with this than providing quiet cooling for a budget system. I see new tech and the first thing I think about is rednecking it onto old tech.
Can be found here.
Like Static Bars? I use these at work, they put out quite a bit of wind with no moving parts...Nothing to see here... http://www.simco-static.com/data/PLStaticBars.shtml
I hope this technology finds its way onto Intel Nehalem... SSD + SS Fan = Dead silent laptop Now if only we could get batteries 12 times more efficient
Ooh, more O2 for your Li-Ion fires!
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
how this would held up in a dusty environment - Q-Tips still working?
When I read the title about a microchip fan, I thought they were talking about micromechanics--I may have the name wrong but I'm talking about tiny miniature mechanical systems that can be integrated into a chip-like package, like a microscopic gearbox that was demonstrated a while back. But this is way cooler: Generating a tiny corona wind by way of physics and chemistry to create a flow of air is definitely a breakthrough, and in retrospect (which is always 20/20), using a fan to cool a chip is rather the brute-force method. I really hope to see self-cooling chips with this technology. They mentioned the lack of sound. Imagine the upcoming laptops with solid state hard drives having a solid state cooling system too. Totally silent computing! Not to mention what it will do for battery life.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
Proprietary product produced via NSF funding at Prudue University (a public Land Grant university)? Hasn't there been some talk about public access to NSF-funded research?
I admit to not having a clue about it, but wonder if these devices could be stacked to make a very thin personal cooling fan. It'd probably be a tad expensive, but I can see a market for it even so, especially in offices. If nothing else, it'd be a new toy for the moderately wealthy, leading to larger economies of scale that let ordinary slobs like us own it too. What with all this talk about ions, I wonder if it could be tweaked to pump out negative ions, which allegedly improve mood.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
From plasma discharge, to omitting ozone, to collecting dust... This thing sounds like way too much trouble than it's worth. While the concept sounds amazing and I would love to be able to implement these into UMPCs and laptops, it's just going to do more harm than good.
Just what I don't need, free-radical generators. Not only is it a component of smog, but it's bad for organic substances as well. No thanks, I'll stick with a ball-bearing fan.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
It's called a quarter ffs.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
From the looks of a report on Purdue's website, it's been undergoing research since at least 2003.
Procrastination sucks.
I hear that the only downside to this new technology is that it throws off a lot of heat.
I hate to burst your bubble, Fanbois. . .
ba-dum, bum
It appears that the size comparisons for this device do not include the dimensions of the high voltage power supply needed to operate it. It's possible that the efficiency numbers don't include the power supply conversion efficiency either. Since small, efficient high voltage power supplies tend to be highly nontrivial and somewhat expensive to build, that is a significant hurdle to adoption. Consider the size and power draw of the inverter needed to power the backlight in a laptop, and now consider that the voltage required by this fan is about 10 times higher. Efficiency of power supplies drops with increasing voltage ratios, too. I would say this is a significant problem for commercialization of this idea.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
Not off topic
Does it have lips?
I am open source, and Linux baby!
Will this produce the same ozone (O3) emissions that the Ionic breeze does?
Yes.
And if nothing is done to react it back harmlessly the ozone will corrode downwind metals and degrade downwind plastics.
But I'm more concerned about the leftover ions that are carried past the plates. Those can accumulate very high charges (even beyond the voltage used to create the ions) on downstream surfaces. This could destroy semiconductors (if they carry more power when arcing over than the ESD protection can handle) as well as corrupt data (through direct signal injection, capacitive coupling of surges, and mini-EMPs).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
So when does the jet engine version come out?
Well, if I eat a couple of bean burritos, I can usually generate that much wind easily.
Unfortunately, it's seldom silent or cool. :-/
Hmm, what they are not saying is that they are likely using 30W of power to cool a 25W chip...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Curious, if anyone here knows, is "air" the only possible/practical working fluid for something like this? Could it be immersed in some sort of liquid solution to produce a similar "flow" effect without the need for a pump to use liquid cooling, or stray Ozone?
They brought it back -- http://store.mozilla.org/product.php?code=14%2093119&catid=14
I found the articles fascinating and... Way Cool (pun intended).
The High-Velocity aspect of the fan v. volumes was also very interesting. Faster isn't always better.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
Can I get one for my house?
Any tiny thing with a tiny coil around it and hook it to a battery will result in flight if you let it!
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
Well, think positively: finally it'll be possible to have a nVidia north-bridge that does't have the equivalent of a fighter jet fan to cool it. (Or at least sounds like it's going to take off and smash into the mandatory case window.)
;)
;)
;)
Ok, so it might build up static and fry the CPU. Big deal. If you bought one of those babies just to run 6-way SLI (3 slot x 2 GPU per 9800GX2 card), you don't want to hang on to one CPU for too long anyway. The CPU is the bottleneck in that setup, and is keeping your preciouss 3DMark score low. If you don't upgrade it immediately when a higher frequency becomes available, and post your new 3DMark scores immediately, your willy-waving rights might be at stake. Worse yet, people might start thinking you're a girl!
So just think of the static buildup as a gentle reminder to upgrade ASAP.
Plus, ok, so you already have every colour of led fan, near UV tubes, glowing SATA cables, and glowing dye in the water-cooling water. Big deal. Every cool kid has those nowadays. Just having a good look at the innards of a computer which looks like a terror attack at a clown makeup factory, only gets you so much willy-waving rights nowadays. So where do you go from there? A few electric sparks and a nice St. Elmo's fire discharge around the PSU and HDD connectors might just add that extra touch.
Everyone will be in awe of that computer at the next LAN party. If they move their stuff away from you and inquire politely about a fire extinguisher, it's just a sign that they're humbled by your greatness and know that their lame-ass girlie rig would look like loser-gear next to yours
Plus, there's probably some paint around that glows when hit by those ions. Like that stuff they put in fluorescent lights. Imagine having a bad-ass glowing logo on your case's window. Now that would proclaim you as "T3H UB3R-L33T H4XXX0R". I mean, it's simply hardcore
Sure, you might lose the contents of that HDD now and then, but it's not too bad. Windows fills with crud anyway, and eventually it might affect those preciouss 3DMark scores. A reformat now and then will do the sucker a world of good.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
'The phenomenon is called corona wind'.... Hell how's that news? Corona's been giving me wind for years.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(beer)
...for a second I thought it said self-COOKING chips. We already have those.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
...as I'm sure most are already quite able to generate all the wind needed - and them some!
the corona discharge plates are filthy and need to be cleaned?
I use the technology already to keep my office/recording studio air clean.
Nothing to see here.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
If these things are mass-produced and cheap, I can see people experimenting with modulating the high voltage to use them as plasma tweeters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_arc_loudspeaker
In the past, such tweeters have been used in a few expensive high end loudspeakers, but if it is shown they can be built cheaply they might become more common.
C - the footgun of programming languages
That kit is pretty overpriced. The circuit is basically just a ladder of capacitors, with terminals at the appropriate points. You can get the circuit diagram on the web, but you may not even need that with some knowledge of capacitors. I built one about a year ago- not for tinkering with ionic breeze but for shocking the heck out of people. If you ground one side (aluminum foil on your shoe) and stick the other electrode to your body, you shock anyone who touches you.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Does this produce ozone? -- because that would be bad.
The article seems to imply that the "wind" has a neutral charge, but that's generally not how ionic wind works. (Molecules with a charge are pushed away from a like-charged surface).
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
A corporation has legal rights to exclusive use of a good idea, but doesn't sell it to the market on Open Source terms, competing with other companies to provide the best implementation of that idea at the lowest cost. Alert the presses!
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana