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Principle and prototype of the silent heat driven liquid metal cooling device.
1. Finned heat exchanger; 2. Electrodes of thermoelectric generator (TEG); 3. Magnetofluiddynamic pump; 4. Liquid metal; 5. Permanent magnetic plate; 6. TEG; 7. Substrate with flow channels; 8. Simulating chip.
With the soaring advances in computational speed, thermal management becomes a major concern in computer systems. To remove residual heat generated from computer chips or very large scale integrated circuit raises, a research team headed by Prof. LIU Jing with the CAS Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry in Beijing has developed a novel liquid metal cooling system that can be powered by the heat produced by computer chips. The feat was reported by the UK
Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics as a cover article.
Liquid metal with a low melting point was already established as the most conductive coolant for efficiently cooling the computer chip. By making full use of the double merits of the liquid metal, i.e. superior heat transfer performance and electromagnetically drivable ability, Prof. Liu and his colleagues have demonstrated, for the first time in the world, the liquid-cooling concept for the thermal management of a computer chip using waste heat to power the thermoelectric generator (TEG) and thus the flow of the liquid metal.
Such a device consumes no external net energy, which warrants it a self-supporting and completely silent liquid-cooling module. Experiments on devices driven by one or two stage TEGs indicate that a dramatic temperature drop on the simulating chip has been realized without the aid of any fans. The higher the heat load, the larger will be the temperature decrease caused by the cooling device. Further, the two TEGs will generate a larger current if a copper plate is sandwiched between them to enhance heat dissipation there. This new method is expected to be significant in future thermal management of a desk or notebook computer, where both efficient cooling and extremely low energy consumption are of major concern.