[HN Gopher] Thermal transistors handle heat with no moving parts
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Thermal transistors handle heat with no moving parts
Author : Turing_Machine
Score : 5 points
Date : 2023-11-14 07:00 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| calamari4065 wrote:
| Title is very unclear, but it looks like they're modulating
| thermal _conductivity_ with an electric field. It 's definitely
| not a peltier junction as I thought at first.
|
| Seems like this is actually a novel mechanism. Very interesting,
| I wonder what applications it will find? Cooling of CPUs seems
| like a bad use case, but I'm sure someone will find a very
| interesting application
| dragontamer wrote:
| I agree. Cooling of CPUs is awful use of this tech. Why would
| anyone turn down thermal conductivity? Just always be sucking
| heat out.
|
| --------
|
| The most obvious application would be electrically controlled
| insulators.
|
| If it's winter or summer, insulate the house.
|
| But if outdoors is 72F (or 21C or another ideal temperature),
| let the ideal temperature into the house.
|
| Temperature controlled crystal oscillators are another
| application IMO. Applications where we have a 'target
| temperature', and easy access to differing temperatures (ex
| inside the oven vs outside the oven vs the heat from a heater)
| adrian_b wrote:
| Free research paper:
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375278656_Electrica...
| westurner wrote:
| "Test Processor With New Thermal Transistors Cools Chip Without
| Moving Parts" https://www.tomshardware.com/news/test-processor-
| with-new-th... :
|
| > _Compared to normal cooling methods, the experimental
| transistors were 13 times better._
|
| "Electrically gated molecular thermal switch" (2023)
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo4297 :
|
| > Abstract: _Controlling heat flow is a key challenge for
| applications ranging from thermal management in electronics to
| energy systems, industrial processing, and thermal therapy.
| However, progress has generally been limited by slow response
| times and low tunability in thermal conductance. In this work, we
| demonstrate an electronically gated solid-state thermal switch
| using self-assembled molecular junctions to achieve excellent
| performance at room temperature. In this three-terminal device,
| heat flow is continuously and reversibly modulated by an electric
| field through carefully controlled chemical bonding and charge
| distributions within the molecular interface. The devices have
| ultrahigh switching speeds above 1 megahertz, have on /off ratios
| in thermal conductance greater than 1300%, and can be switched
| more than 1 million times. We anticipate that these advances will
| generate opportunities in molecular engineering for thermal
| management systems and thermal circuit design._
| rcxdude wrote:
| >Can switch at 1MHz
|
| >can be switched "more than 1 million times"
|
| Seems like longevity is a potential issue. Definitely could be
| useful for a few applications (especially temperature control),
| though I'm not really sure about a pure cooling application.
| westurner wrote:
| Would there be any returns to pairing this approach with
| recent advances in laser cooling (and integrated photonics)?
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| It would be very handy technology in thermal batteries and
| combined industrial processes which make use of waste heat.
|
| Of course, you can use other ways to archive the same, but there
| is something neat in solid-state zero moving parts approach.
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(page generated 2023-11-14 23:01 UTC)