Researchers Build a Heat Shield Just 10 Atoms Thick To Protect Electronic Devices (phys.org) 20
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Excess heat given off by smartphones, laptops and other electronic devices can be annoying, but beyond that it contributes to malfunctions and, in extreme cases, can even cause lithium batteries to explode. To guard against such ills, engineers often insert glass, plastic or even layers of air as insulation to prevent heat-generating components like microprocessors from causing damage or discomforting users. Now, Stanford researchers have shown that a few layers of atomically thin materials, stacked like sheets of paper atop hot spots, can provide the same insulation as a sheet of glass 100 times thicker. In the near term, thinner heat shields will enable engineers to make electronic devices even more compact than those we have today, said Eric Pop, professor of electrical engineering and senior author of a paper published Aug. 16 in Science Advances. "To make nanoscale heat shields practical, the researchers will have to find some mass production technique to spray or otherwise deposit atom-thin layers of materials onto electronic components during manufacturing," adds Phys.Org.
"But behind the immediate goal of developing thinner insulators looms a larger ambition: Scientists hope to one day control the vibrational energy inside materials the way they now control electricity and light. As they come to understand the heat in solid objects as a form of sound, a new field of phononics is emerging, a name taken from the Greek root word behind telephone, phonograph and phonetics."
"But behind the immediate goal of developing thinner insulators looms a larger ambition: Scientists hope to one day control the vibrational energy inside materials the way they now control electricity and light. As they come to understand the heat in solid objects as a form of sound, a new field of phononics is emerging, a name taken from the Greek root word behind telephone, phonograph and phonetics."
Researchers Build a Heat Shield 10 Atoms Thick (Score:4, Funny)
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I wonder how applicable this is (Score:3)
to spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere, which is what I thought the headline was about initially.
It won't make phones more compact, just thinner.
Re:I wonder how applicable this is (Score:5, Interesting)
Technically the article is seemingly incorrect, it is not about protecting the electronic components, they are the source of the heat, it is about protecting us from that heat or specific components from other the heat generated by other components.
No matter how insulative, it only slows the transmission of heat and does not prevent it, so the design does not work over long use. You must also conduct heat away to where it causes less of a problem and is diffused across a larger mass and area to lessen the heat impact at the heat loss. Also all electronics hate heat and the smaller the structure to more in becomes affected by molecular drift and short circuits, so cooler is way better than warmer.
It makes more sense to turn the backing plate of a phone into the battery and conduct heat from the core of the phone around the periphery and then into the back plate of the battery, now user replaceable.
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Nothing prevents the transmission of heat except maybe a perfect vacuum, which does not exist. Even then, infrared photons could cross the intervening space. So yeah, no kidding.
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I also wondered if they could use Aerogel for that purpose.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
But I'm not sure if they would stand up to damage very well.. Because we all know what happens when a heat-shield is damaged on re-entry.
better than glass 100 times thicker, eh? (Score:1)
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I know what you mean, I just bought a 10-atom-thick shield, and now the 9-atom ones are out. Can never keep up.
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Just take off the cover for about 10^1000 times that effect.
Oh wait, then the phone might crumble between your fingers like a sheet of foil.
10 Atoms Thick? We Have Tha (Score:5, Informative)
It's called Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), and it's used in semiconductor fabrication.
See also: Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) and Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD). Graphene (mentioned in the article) is usually deposited via CVD.
Damping? I don't think so. (Score:5, Interesting)
The heat we feel from smartphones or laptops is actually an inaudible form of high-frequency sound.
But:
Despite its thinness, the insulator is effective because the atomic heat vibrations are dampened and lose much of their energy as they pass through each layer.
No, I don't think so. If the sound was losing energy by damping, it would turn inito heat. But heat is the same random very high frequency noise they're "damping". So ending up with less of it would be breaking the first law of thermodynamics.
I suspect what's actually happening is that the "sound that is heat" is not being coupled well from one layer to another. So it stays on the side it came from.
Now maybe SOME of it is changing frequency, from a narrow band that had been able to propagate across one boundary to a wider band (i.e. back to the broadband "sound that is heat"), leaving less in the band that can make the hop between layers to make the next hop. That would count as "damping". But I suspect that clear thinking about what is really going on may help improve things further as this is developed.
I'm wondering about refraction, and whether one could achieve total internal reflection of sound-as-heat.
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I suspect what's actually happening is that the "sound that is heat" is not being coupled well from one layer to another. So it stays on the side it came from.
[...]
I'm wondering about refraction, and whether one could achieve total internal reflection of sound-as-heat.
If it's not being absorbed, it pretty much has to be reflected, right? Either that, or absorbed and then only/mostly radiated in the incident direction.
from the i-don't-know-what-I'm-talking-about dept. (Score:3)
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People spend money to put heat sinks on their electronics and these people want to insulate theirs.
Full specifications of Chinese electric motors https://ele1020.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
In other words (Score:2)
They'll make the dawn things still thinner and we'll have to buy still thicker covers.
But ... how is this GOOD? (Score:3)
Last time I checked the problem of a CPU is that it gets hot and has to move that heat somewhere. If you now insulate that heat where it is, doesn't that make the problem get worse by, well, not being able to get rid of that heat?
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Some parts of the chip get hot. Some don't. Insulate the hot parts from one another but don't insulate the hot parts from the cold parts. The hot parts aren't all generating heat at the same time. Lay out the chip to segregate them.
10 Atoms Thick To Protect Electronic Devices (Score:1)