This is an interesting development. It seems every technological advance has a heat problem piggy backing along. So a nifty cooling super performer is automatically welcome. It may not be used in all but the most pressing cases, but this establishes the capability.
We have a copper diamond wick that extracts heat two orders of magnitude faster.
We will be soon be fabricating multi layered skins that will include functional solid state refrigeration as core to the design. The major remaining question was the management of heat flow. This goes a long way to resolving just that. Apparently a working fluid is used and that also suggests that such fluid can transport the heat away from the working device efficiently.
A working magnetic exclusion bubble is becoming more and more feasible and this could also do wonders for the processor industry. Think again in terms of a robust three dimensional architecture that has been avoided not because of technical difficulty but because of heat management difficulties. Now we can imagine such architecture.
I believe that this is the first credible advance in heat transfer technology superseding our present decades old techniques.
Composite of diamond and copper Helps to Make Heat Transfer 100 Times Better
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0L7lDUOTVH_4yLt84XbTZXg5AQoGW6QlUhBS3yXXm-76BV0NyFBKBPHBPJPlSQ8ZgJnsh2pJnKBp3ubkYJCG3fFHu0PMpHEQ6kTrn7L29QRMaku4SeYfbboWBpIqbTDpAq6zkQ4zKOBw/s1600-h/heatransfer.jpg
sample of a novel material that may be used to remove heat from future radar systems. (Georgia Tech Photo: Gary Meek)
The exotic material, a composite of diamond and copper, is one of the materials under development as part of a new concept called a “Thermal Ground Plane” that aims to remove heat up to 100 times more effectively than present thermal-conducting schemes.Georgia Tech is working with the Raytheon Co. on a project that seeks to raise thermal conductivity capabilities to 20,000 watts per meter Kelvin (a measure of thermal-conductivity efficiency). That’s a tall order, considering that the current conductivity champion, for radar applications, is a copper material with performance of approximately 200 to 300 watts per meter Kelvin. The three-phase, four-year project is sponsored by the Microsystems Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
This improved cooling capability could benefit future high-power transmit-receive (T/R) module packages. Because of their higher power, those transmit-receive modules will also have higher cooling needs that may require a Thermal Ground Plane—a sort of heat-dissipating sandwich about one millimeter thick that would be part of the T/R module’s packaging.
"A Thermal Ground Plane is basically a materials system,” Nadler explained. “The most thermally conductive natural material, pure diamond, has a conductivity of about 2,000 watts per meter Kelvin. We’re aiming for 20,000, and to do that we have to look at the problem from a materials systems standpoint.”
The conductivity of that material would be improved with the addition of a liquid coolant able to carry heat away from the T/R module devices in the same way that sweat cools a body. A metal heat sink would help the liquid coolant dissipate the heat by condensing the vapor back to a fluid. Using a liquid coolant takes advantage of phase changes—the conversion of matter between liquid and vapor states. The diamond-copper material would conduct heat to the liquid coolant and optimize cooling through wicking and evaporation. Then, the heat would be rejected as the vapor is re-condensed to a liquid on the side attached to the metal heat sink.
"The trick is to use evaporation, condensation and intrinsic thermal conductivity together, in series, in a continuous system,” Nadler said. “The whole device is a closed loop.”
In addition, the porous internal structure of the diamond-copper material must have exactly the right size and shape to maximize its own intrinsic heat conductivity. Yet its internal structure must also be designed in ways that can help draw the liquid coolant toward the heat source to facilitate evaporation. Nadler explained that liquid coolant flow can be maximized by fine tuning such mechanisms as the capillarity of the diamond-copper material.
Capillarity refers to a given structure’s ability to draw in a substance, especially a liquid, the way a sponge absorbs water or a medical technician pulls a drop of blood up into a narrow glass tube.
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