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Thermal Transistors Handle Heat With No Moving PartsThe technology offers a new way to cool down chips quickly (spectrum.ieee.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Electronic transistors are central to modern electronics. These devices precisely control the flow of electricity, but in doing so, they generate heat. Now, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles have developed a solid-state thermal transistor—the first device of its kind that can use an electric field to control the flow of heat through electronics. Their study, which was recently published in Science, demonstrates the capabilities of the new technology.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I believe this is the paper this article is referencing from UCLA.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-36056-4

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not specifically. The article references a paper in Science: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo4297. I haven't been able to find a publically available version of the Science paper.

The device in the Nature article is very large, "centimetre-scale", and works via magnetism. It is also not really controllable, as it responds to change in temperature. The Science article device is electronically controlled.

However, progress has generally been limited by slow response times and low tunability in thermal conductance.

This might be in reference to the kind of device in the Nature article, however it does not directly cite the other article.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This article is so much better than what was posted 2 weeks ago (https://lemmy.nz/post/2974266).

Now I do understand it better, tho still not perfectly.

So it can be used to manage hot spots in chips and semiconductors.

If you don't know why it matters, in one of these 2 videos (I don't remember which one) Der8auer discusses with an intel engineer the challenges of designing a chip, where to put the thermal probe and why some parts are designed like that :

Basically : the heat travels through the chip at different rates depending on the material distance... And finding the hot spot is very challenging.

So having better cooling where it matters can be a benefit for chip cooling and efficiency.

Now I don't know if this tech can evolve into something which can be used for this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

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