Will Hutchins, a mechanical and aerospace engineering Ph.D. candidate, helped lead a University of Virginia team that revealed a radical new way to move heat faster than ever before. Credit: Matt Cosner, University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science
A team of engineers from the University of Virginia have developed a radical method which moves heat faster than ever before. The method, which uses hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) crystals, sidesteps traditional cooling bottlenecks by moving heat like a beam of light.
"We're rethinking how we handle heat," said Patrick Hopkins, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UVA. "Instead of letting it slowly trickle away, we're directing it."
Modern technology generates significant amounts of heat while operating and if they are not properly cooled, performance can be significantly impacted. Current cooling methods rely on metal heat sinks, fans, or liquid cooling to control temperatures however these methods occupy valuable space within devices and require extra power to operate.
Traditional cooling techniques use slow moving phonons to dissipate heat outwards like ripples in a pond. In stark contrast to these ripples, the cooling technique devised by the UVA engineers transforms the heat into tightly channeled waves which can efficiently travel long distances. To achieve these waves, the team heated a gold pad sitting on hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) crystals. Upon exposure to heat, the hBN crystals convert that energy into fast moving polaritonic waves which instantly carries the heat away.
"This method is incredibly fast," said Will Hutchins, mechanical and aerospace engineering Ph.D. candidate at UVA. "We're seeing heat move in ways that weren't thought possible in solid materials. It's a completely new way to control temperature at the nanoscale."
"This discovery could change how we design everything from processors to spacecrafts," Hopkins concluded.