Summary
As electronics get smaller and more compact, they require increasingly efficient cooling, and the smaller the cooler must be, the more pressure is required to maintain consistent flow of the liquid, which begins to require exponentially more energy the smaller they get. To the tune of 50x the efficiency, scientists have achieved this very well by going from uniform-width microchannels to ones that narrow exactly where the heat is- mimicking and inspired by how veins transform into capillaries at certain points. Pictured below is the above-mentioned breakthrough.
Picture of a chip with a new integrated microfluidic cooling system developed by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. Credit: Copyright © Alain Herzog EPFL
Quotes
My thoughts
After having seen multiple breakthroughs in different scientific areas in the past, all inspired by nature, it is clear to me that the superior philosophy, in the future at least, will be to mimic the organic until such a time as artificial intelligence becomes better at design than God- which is fundamentally impossible, but you get my meaning. I am in general simultaneously very excited about the progression of technology and very disturbed at how far I have to go in my education before I can begin to work on bleeding-edge things like this.
Sources
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/blood-and-silicon-new-electronics-cooling-system-mimics-human-capillaries/