Thermal management of chips by a device prototype using synergistic effects of 3-D heat-conductive network and electrocaloric refrigeration

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 13; no. 1; p. 5849
• Main Authors: Li, Ming-Ding, Shen, Xiao-Quan, Chen, Xin, Gan, Jia-Ming, Wang, Fang, Li, Jian, Wang, Xiao-Liang, Shen, Qun-Dong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 04.10.2022; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 639/301/923/1028; 639/766/119/996; Actuation; Cooling; Dipoles; Electric contacts; Electric fields; Electroactive polymers; Electronics; Entropy; Heat conductivity; Heat transfer; Humanities and Social Sciences; Interfaces; multidisciplinary; Nucleation; Polymers; Prototypes; Refrigeration; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Synergistic effect; Thermal conductivity; Thermal energy; Thermal management
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-33596-z

With speeding up development of 5 G chips, high-efficient thermal structure and precise management of tremendous heat becomes a substantial challenge to the power-hungry electronics. Here, we demonstrate an interpenetrating architecture of electrocaloric polymer with highly thermally conductive pathways that achieves a 240% increase in the electrocaloric performance and a 300% enhancement in the thermal conductivity of the polymer. A scaled-up version of the device prototype for a single heat spot cooling of 5 G chip is fabricated utilizing this electrocaloric composite and electromagnetic actuation. The continuous three-dimensional (3-D) thermal conductive network embedded in the polymer acts as nucleation sites of the ordered dipoles under applied electric field, efficiently collects thermal energy at the hot-spots arising from field-driven dipolar entropy change, and opens up the high-speed conduction path of phonons. The synergy of two components, thus, tackles the challenge of sluggish heat dissipation of the electroactive polymers and their contact interfaces with low thermal conductivity, and more importantly, significantly reduces the electric energy for switching the dipolar states during the electrocaloric cycles, and increases the manipulable entropy at the low fields. Such a feasible solution is inevitable to the precisely fixed-point thermal management of next-generation smart microelectronic devices. Efficient thermal structure and precise heat management become a substantial challenge for electronics. Here, authors utilize the synergistic effect of classic heat transfer and electrocaloric cooling for fixed-point thermal management of chips.