Ionic cooling in the future

Cooling your computer using a water-based solution is not the best way to do it anymore. A new technology of cooling has appeared. It will increase the cooling abilities of usual fans very much. As computers' powers grow more and more heat is generated by its chips and we need gadgets to deal with that heat. The scientists believe that wind engines that create a "breeze" of charged particles (ions) will be able to keep the chips cool.

After the research the scientists have discovered that airflow cooling fans are not very effective because of the problems in air flow. Even when the fan blows the air to a chip, the nearest molecules to the chip tend to stay at the surface of it, which makes cooling effect much smaller.

The new technology created by the scientists is going a different way by shifting the charged particles from one end of the chip to the other. The experimental wind engine charges up particles and sends them over the chip, they are being attracted to negatively charged wires and this will make the molecules of air to constantly move improving cooling abilities. With introduction of ions in cooling technology there will be no need for water cooled solutions.

Professor Suresh Garimella gave the numbers about the improvement of the cooling abilities on computer chips. Their new gadget will improve cooling powers by 250% which basically means a 2.5 times increase in cooling. I wish I had something like that because my cooler sometimes goes to a 5 thousand RPM and gets really loud. By the way any other enhancements that you can do to your computer will increase cooling power by 40-50% (1.4-1.5 times). Just so you can compare how effective the new technology will be.

The last thing research team needs to do is to shrink their device to the size that can be used in the computers. That means that they have to shrink it a hundred times, and that will be a very big challenge for them. As for the rest of the device it is fully functional and we will have to wait another three years or so until hits the market.