Technology manufacturers know well enough that building faster chips means looking for competent CPU cooling methods to aid heat dissipation. IBM and MIT have stepped up with cooling solutions that looked promising in the past. Now researchers at the University of Rochester have discovered a technique by which water can be directed to flow uphill along nanometer-scale structures carved into silicon with short, high-powered laser bursts.
The study was put together in the journal ‘Optics Express’ by Professor Chunlei Guo and assistant Anatoliy Vorobyev of the University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics. The researchers carefully carved nanometer-scale laser incisions into the silicon to be nondestructive so that the surface remains smooth to the touch. Liquid moves up the silicon chip due to the attraction or hydrophile quality of silicon that weakens the bond between water molecules.
The researchers were able to coax liquid up the chip without outside pressure at a speed of 3.5 cm per second. Instead of sticking to each other, water molecules climb over one other in order to get to the silicon. The journal titled ‘Applied Physics Letters’ by the very same researchers proved that this behavior could be induced in metal too. Extending the technique to silicon means that chip manufacturers could be looking at this as an alternate method of cooling CPUs in future.
This new technique of cooling has not been implemented in a prototype as yet, though Guo considers the ability of silicon to pump its own coolant to have high potential in cooling solutions for PC systems.
