Jumping Water Droplets Could Be the Future of Cooling Computers

[Pup Shepard]

Duke University

http://pratt.duke.edu/about/news/cooling-droplets

 

 

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New technology adds a third dimension to cooling modern electronics

By Ken Kingery

 

Engineers have developed a technology to cool hotspots in high-performance electronics using the same physical phenomenon that cleans the wings of cicadas.

When water droplets merge, the reduction in surface area causes the release of a small amount of energy. So long as the surface beneath is hydrophobic enough to repel water, this energy is sufficient to make the merged droplet jump away.

On the wings of cicadas, this phenomenon drives droplets to catch and remove particles of dirt and debris. In the new cooling technology created by engineers at Duke University and Intel Corporation, droplets jump toward hotspots to bring cooling where the electronics need it most.

The results appear online on April 3, 2017, in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

“Hotspot cooling is very important for high-performance technologies,” said Chuan-Hua Chen, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke. “Computer processors and power electronics don’t perform as well if waste heat cannot be removed. A better cooling system will enable faster computers, longer-lasting electronics and more powerful electric vehicles.”

When droplets merge on a super hydrophobic surface, the loss in surface area releases enough energy to make them jump up off the surface.

The new technology relies on a vapor chamber made of a super-hydrophobic floor with a sponge-like ceiling. When placed beneath operating electronics, moisture trapped in the ceiling vaporizes beneath emerging hotspots. The vapor escapes toward the floor, taking heat away from the electronics along with it.

Passive cooling structures integrated into the floor of the device then carry away the heat, causing the water vapor to condense into droplets. As the growing droplets merge, they naturally jump off the hydrophobic floor and back up into the ceiling beneath the hotspot, and the process repeats itself. This happens independent of gravity and regardless of orientation, even if the device is upside-down.

The technology has many advantages over existing cooling techniques. Thermoelectric coolers that act as tiny refrigerators cannot target random hotspot locations, making them inefficient for use over large areas. Other approaches can target moving hotspots, but require additional power inputs, which also leads to inefficiencies.

A schematic of how the new jumping droplets electronics cooling system works

The jumping-droplet cooling technology also has a built-in mechanism for vertical heat escape, which is a major advantage over today’s heat spreaders that mostly dissipate heat in a single plane.

“As an analogy, to avoid flooding, it is useful to spread the rain over a large area. But if the ground is soaked, the water has no vertical pathway to escape, and flooding is inevitable,” said Chen. “Flat-plate heat pipes are remarkable in their horizontal spreading, but lack a vertical mechanism to dissipate heat. Our jumping-droplet technology addresses this technological void with a vertical heat spreading mechanism, opening a pathway to beat the best existing heat spreaders in all directions.”

There is still much work to be done before Chen’s jumping droplets can compete with today’s cooling technologies. The main challenge is to find suitable materials that work with high-heat vapor over the long term. But Chen remains optimistic.

“It has taken us a few years to work the system to a point where it’s at least comparable to a copper heat spreader, the most popular cooling solution,” said Chen. “But now, for the first time, I see a pathway to beating the industry standards.”

This work was supported by Intel Corporation and the National Science Foundation (CBET-12-36373, DMR-11-21107, DGF-11-06401).

“Hotspot cooling with jumping-drop vapor chambers,” Kris F. Wiedenheft, H. Alex Guo, Xiaopeng Qu, Jonathan B. Boreyko, Fangjie Liu, Kungang Zhang, Feras Eid, Arnab Choudhury, Zhihua Li and Chuan-Hua Chen. Applied Physics Letters, 2017. DOI: 10.1063/1.4979477

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[Murasaki]

im still not letting liquids near my hardware

[captain cactus]

12 minutes ago, ModuleLFS said:

im still not letting liquids near my hardware

Good luck getting any cooling done ever.

 

Whaddaya think's in heatpipes?

 

 

Anyway, cool tech, but by the time this will arrive I'll be 80 years old. As how it always goes with cool tech, someone thinks of a cool idea but then forgets to think about a cost efficient and fast way to mass produce it.

[RadiatingLight]

3 minutes ago, lots of unexplainable lag said:

Whaddaya think's in heatpipes?

The difference is that heatpipes don't leak, and if they do get punctured, the liquid evaporates instantly, so it can't kill hardware.

 

[Jito463]

I know this has been posted before, but I can't seem to locate the thread at the moment.

[Drak3]

Old news, new article.

[jagdtigger]

50 minutes ago, RadiatingLight said:

The difference is that heatpipes don't leak, and if they do get punctured, the liquid evaporates instantly, so it can't kill hardware.

 

If you assemble it properly it wont leak . And make sure you dont overheat the tube when you bend it .

[Doobeedoo]

I think this was mentioned, knew about it. Anyway, it's cool, though how good yet to see I guess. 

[Sakkura]

Repost

 

 

[Grinners]

I can't fathom how it can work upside down if one side is hydrophobic and the other side sponge like. 

 

When the sponge side was on the bottom the water wouldn't jump...