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MIT Scientists Make a Polyethylene Heatsink
arcticstoat calls our attention to MIT research that has produced a version of polyethylene that can conduct heat away from computer chips. Polyethylene is the most widely used plastic. It's not clear how practical this research is for industrial-scale use, involving as it does an atomic-force microscope. The work is detailed in a paper published in Nature Nanotechnology this month. "The new process causes the polymer to conduct heat very efficiently in just one direction, unlike metals, which conduct equally well in all directions. ... The key to the transformation was getting all the polymer molecules to line up the same way, rather than forming a chaotic tangled mass, as they normally do. The team did that by slowly drawing a polyethylene fiber out of a solution, using the finely controllable cantilever of an atomic-force microscope, which they also used to measure the properties of the resulting fiber. This fiber was about 300 times more thermally conductive than normal polyethylene along the direction of the individual fibers, says the team’s leader..."
Plastic heatsinks, just don't get them near heat!
What next, a chocolate teapot?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
make it loose its effectiveness??
They include a tiny wrench to tighten it every so often. The first users are suggesting that you should regularly tighten up effectiveness every 400 hours of running.
MIT researchers are currently trying to counteract this self loosening, you may be able to use loctite
Everybody thought it was plastic, but it was just new technology. Now we just have to wait for an announcement on how to mount those crazy i7's
"That alone must be breaking some serious laws of thermodynamics.. "
Only the funny laws of thermodynamics can be broken.
I think he meant loose, as in "loose the dogs of war", rather than loosen. It looses its effectiveness on the heat, maybe? And as it loses its effectiveness it can no longer loose its effectiveness.
Free Martian Whores!
Did they name it Pam?
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Prime example of why scientists can never be successful in business: as soon as s/he finds a potentially tremendously profitable idea, s/he questions whether certain laws would be broken.
Can you make a leisure suit out of this polyethylene? I usually have problems with overheating myself whilst I'm displaying my disco dancing finesse!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"Sign" is in fact how I normally hear it in english.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
I don't know if the oriented nature of gel-spun UHMWPE fibers is quite at the same level and provides the same thermal properties as ones made by drawing them out with an AFM cantilever, but they might be "good enough," considering that gel spinning is a scalable industrial production method while cantilever drawing is a "very careful scientist" sort of method.
Well, I have a solution for that. Swap out all the CAPTCHAs on major sites for a webcam peering into an electron microscope that allows a person to draw out the polymer molecules with the cantilever. A week or two, tops, and you'll have someone who's created a bot that can do it perfectly.
Another, similar way is to have Blizzard do the same thing, except using it as a substitute for a CAPTCHA, for every molecule they pull, they get 1 silver piece added to an account of their choice. You'll get the same results, except the bot will speak Chinese.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Hmm, it's not often I make a joke that I myself do not get...
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)