Passive cooling: Hydrogel significantly improves temperatures according to study
Researchers at the University of California have developed a hydrogel that is intended to reduce temperatures under load, especially in passively cooled electronics. Therefore, read below how it works and why it only makes sense for cyclically used hardware.
A major challenge in product development in the electronics sector is cooling. While graphics cards and processors in higher performance classes can no longer be cooled passively, this is often not the case for power electronics and other circuit boards. Now it seems that a new discovery has been made in the field of cooling, which is positive for energy and water consumption as well as for the electronics to be cooled. The scientists from the University of California have achieved a temperature delta of 15 Kelvin, which is a very respectable result when using the same cooler.
Raijintek Morpheus 8069: Huge graphics card cooler is a good 170 euros
To do this, they prepared the heat sinks with a hydrogel that is conceptually similar to animal sweat. The scientists have explained that as soon as the power electronics that are to be cooled become warm, the hydrogel exudes water, which then causes a cooling effect by evaporating. As soon as the electronics are back in idle mode, the hydrogel regenerates by absorbing moisture from the ambient air.
The researchers see the area of application above all in cyclic load operation such as radio towers and data centers, which have high loads during the day and only low loads at night. The hydrogel was tested on an old Intel Core i5-4690. This has a TDP of 84 watts and could be kept significantly cooler with the hydrogel than with all other passive coolers. At a room temperature of 22 °C and a humidity of 70 percent, a temperature delta of 15 Kelvin compared to achieved with purely passive cooling.
The costs for the hydrogel are still relatively high, but should be scalable. So far, the price is around 12 US dollars per application and the areas of application seem diverse. While the researchers tested what their invention creates on an old processor, the question arises in the future as to whether the hydrogel would not be a sensible option for mobile devices with high efficiency and changing load conditions and how much difference it could make here.
Source: ScienceDirect
Reference-www.pcgameshardware.de