Recently, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology researchers Dmitry Fedyanin and Andrey Vyshnevyy have solved and “demonstrated how to efficiently cool optoelectronic microprocessors” by using industry-standard heat sinks, according to Phys.org.
Optoelectronic chips’ active plasmonic components tend to overheat from high-speed data transfer, but by switching electrons with photons, and cooling them with thermal grease, this solution means that “these will be able to function tens of thousands of times faster than the microprocessors currently in use today,” reported Phys.org.
Fedyanin and Vyshnevyy have demonstrated that “high-performance optoelectronic chips can be cooled with thermal grease—high-performance thermal interfaces consisting of layers of thermally conductive materials placed between the chip and the cooling system,” Phys.org reported.
“Based on the results of numerical simulations, Fedyanin and Vyshnevyy concluded that […] multi-layered thermal interfaces of nano- and micrometer thickness, combined with simple cooling systems, can reduce the temperature of the chip from several hundred degrees to approximately ten degrees with respect to the ambient temperature,” according to Phys.org.
Phys.org also reported that “this opens the prospects for the implementation of high-performance optoelectronic microprocessors in a wide range of applications, including supercomputers and compact electronic devices.”
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