Nano-lightning May Cool Future Chips
Jerry Fass writes "A Purdue University team has created a lithographically produced cooling microtechnology, with some nanometer size parts. As with many other micron scale systems, the prefix 'nano' is being used in some descriptions of it: 'Nano-lightning' could be harnessed to cool future computers… The device uses micro scale ion driven airflow, a weakly ionized plasma, to drive cooling air currents. Such principles may be useful if scaled down to molecular nanotechnology sizes, for cooling, or maybe propulsion."
May 12th, 2004 at 12:51 PM
Suspect…
Ionized air means ozone, yes? Find me an electronics packaging engineer who wants you blowing ozone over their polymer based packages and adhesives. Not to mention dangers of possibly doping surface features on a chip due to high gradients of ions at the chip/air interface. Plus, moving ions sounds alot like moving electrons, i.e. current. What about the I^2R heat generation from the nanolightning? Oh, and RF interference from the electrostatic discharge? I'll bet if you put a noise source close enough to an RF chip, the power levels of the noise don't need to be very high at all.