Molecular Fan: A Heat Sink for Nanoelectronic Devices

Keywords:
molecular fan, heat sink, nanodevices

Abstract:
Currently, electrical components are cooled by conduction of heat to a heat sink, which is cooled by convection in air. The warm air is then removed from the system using a mechanical fan. As technology progresses and nanoelectronic (or optoelectronic) devices have more components in a smaller area, the heat produced by the nanodevices per volume will drastically increase. Simple convection and mechanical fans will not be able to keep up with this increased heat density. In this presentation, an innovative idea and device, called ¡§molecular fan¡¨ will be presented for the first time. The molecular fan is a coated film (~1-10 ƒ_m) designed with densely oriented molecular functional groups (CH, OH, phenyl, methyl, etc.) on the outer surface for the purpose of dissipating heat more efficiently. The heat source (whether a heat sink or the component itself) transfers heat to the surface film. The coated film absorbs the energy from heat source and becomes excited; this heat causes the functional groups of the coating to vibrate rapidly. The vibrating part of the molecule then efficiently releases the heat via a nonradiative process, where the heat sink remains at a lower temperature.

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Nanotech 2005 Conference Program Abstract