International. Electronic systems accumulate a lot of heat. Cooling is imperative to extend the life of electronics and enable energy efficiency. About half of the power needed to run a computer's servers is used only for cooling purposes.
Years ago, Johan Liu of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden was the first to show that graphene can have a cooling effect on silicon-based electronics.
"The methods that have been in place so far have presented problems for researchers," says Johan Liu. "It has become clear that these methods cannot be used to rid electronic devices of large amounts of heat, because they have consisted of only a few layers of thermally conductive atoms. When you try to add more layers of graphene, another problem arises, a problem with adhesiveness. After the number of layers has increased, graphene will no longer adhere to the surface, as adhesion is held together only by the weak van der Waals bond."
But a new method has been developed by Chalmers researchers. They managed to create strong covalent bonds between the graphene film and the surface. The film can be attached to silicon electronic components. Its thermal conductivity capacity is four times that of copper.
According to Johan Liu, this new breakthrough could "pave the way for faster, smaller, more efficient and more sustainable high-power electronics."
