New Chip-cooling Technology

BillOfThePecosKind writes "Researchers have demonstrated a new technology using tiny "ionic wind engines" that might dramatically improve computer chip cooling, possibly addressing a looming threat to future advances in computers and electronics. Purdue researchers funded by Intel have improved the "heat-transfer coefficient" by some 250%. I never liked water cooled systems, and this sounds promising. However I wonder how much ozone one of these things produces."

Power

[umberto unity]

The problem is the power consumption on this thing. If you assume that they want to move all the air in a small region around the wire even once per second, say 10mm x 1mm x 1cm, to use the dimension quoted in TFA and nominal orders of magnitude for chip size and wire thickness, that corresponds to something ~ 10^-5 moles of air. Since Nitrogen has an ionization energy of 1402.3 kJ/mol (Wikipedia), that means if you want to move that quantity of air every second, you need at least something around 15W. That's even assuming you perfectly convert electrical energy into removing electrons from air molecules, and it's just to ionize the air, neglecting the extra energy it then takes to get the ions moving (we'll pretend the fan does all that, even though that would mean that our device isn't doing jack).

I don't know how much energy my laptop uses, but my power adapter is 65W, so 15 seems non-negligible.

Re:Ozone production FTW

[BobNET]

Rat poison is also damn useful but I wouldn't want it in the air or eating it.

You would if you had a reason to prevent your blood from clotting (a stroke, for example). Coumadin is just a drug company's brand-name for warfarin, a chemical used in some rat poisons (although I wouldn't want to take the stuff intended for the rats either)...

Re:CFCs and HCFCs

[Zonekeeper]

And as a result, air conditioners have to work that much harder in order to cool us off. And don't go spouting nonsense about how they work just as good. B.S. Got in an older Toyota the other day that still had the old refrigerant in it, and the air it throws out of this little 4 banger is WAY colder than any new car I've been in, and that is several makes and models. I mean this thing would put icicles on you, and where I live its 100F out these days. Save the ozone one way (which is such crap...) and drive up energy consumption and create more smog, etc. at the same time. A win-win, wouldn't you say? What crap.

Re:Didn't we already do this one?

[Repossessed]

It looks more like they're using ionic cooling to replace the heatsink instead of replacing the fan. I have to wonder what kind of cooling you could get if you used all three though.

A poor answer to a non-problem.

[Ancient_Hacker]

Let's think a little first:

• Is there a problem here at all? Heatsinks cost about 50 cents wholesale. Processor heat production is going down. I do't think there's much of a problem here to be solved at all.
• Is this a good solution for the non-problem? There are lots of cheap and tried-and-true alternatives, such as heat pipes, conduction cooling to the case, and just bigger heatsinks.
• How well are microscopic pinpoints going to work with your typical dusty air? How much energy does it take to move all that air? A wild-butt-guess suggests not good numbers at all.