Researchers develop heat switch for electronics

Physorg  March 8, 2018
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign engineered a specific heat flow path between the hot region and cold region, and then created a way to break the heat flow path when desired. The technology is based on the motion of a liquid metal droplet which can be positioned to connect a heat flow path or moved away from the heat flow path to limit the heat flow. In demonstrations, when the switch was on, they were able to extract heat at more than 10 W/cm2. When the switch was off, the heat flow dropped by nearly 100X. The next step for the research is to integrate the switch with power electronics on a circuit board… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE 

Schematic of the thermal switch. Credit: Center for Power Optimized Electro Thermal Systems.

Posted in Microelectronics.

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