To increase the efficient use of energy, decreasing the heating of electronic gadgets has been an area of research for last many years. Almost half of the energy of any gadgets like mobiles, tablets, computers, laptops etc. goes towards cooling of the device. Heating of the gadgets is a major problem faced by the industry while attempting to add more processing power to circuits and electronic equipments.
Graphene has the ability to offer cooling effect to electronic systems that are based on silicon. Graphene, a single layer of carbon atom became the life changer in electronics industry. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden developed a solution towards significant heat reduction of circuits. According to the article published in journal of Advanced Materials the solution is based on a grapheme film.
The team of researchers led by Johan Liu reported exceptional outcomes while using grapheme film on electronic circuits based on silicon. They had earlier shown that graphene can have a cooling effect on silicon-based electronics, but the challenge was to stick a thick layer of graphene to silicon chips. They got the solution by creating a strong covalent (silane) bond between the surface and the grapheme film in a silicon based electronic component. Further the researchers could achieve 1600W/mK thermal conductivity levels with grapheme coating.
Liu added that with increase in thermal capacity, grapheme could find application in a number of new areas and an example of this could be the integration of a graphene based film into microelectronic systems and devices like LEDs or Light Emitting Diodes of higher levels of efficiency, and cooling of components for radio frequency and lasers.
Graphene-based film could also pave the way for faster, smaller, more energy efficient, sustainable high power electronics. With amazing applications of graphene, the wearables industry is also looking forward to many new technological applications of the wonder material in the near future.
