New semiconductor cools computer chips

Good news! Keep these hot, powerful chips cool!

"... Researchers led by Yongjie Hu at the University of California, Los Angeles, recently developed a new thermal-management material that is much more efficient at drawing out and dissipating heat than other known metals or semiconducting materials such as diamond and silicon carbide. This new material is known as defect-free boron arsenide (BAs), and Hu and colleagues have now succeeded in interfacing it with computer chips containing wide-bandgap high-electron-mobility gallium nitride (GaN) transistors for the first time. ...
As well as boasting a high thermal conductivity, Hu adds that BAs is ideal for managing heat for another reason too: it has a low thermal boundary resistance. This means that heat passing through it and then into an interfaced material does not slow down as much compared with other heat spreaders. ..."

"... Furthermore, operating AlGaN/GaN high-electron-mobility transistors with BAs cooling substrates exhibit substantially lower hot-spot temperatures than diamond and silicon carbide at the same transistor power density, illustrating their potential for use in the thermal management of radiofrequency electronics. ..."

New semiconductor cools computer chips – Physics World A novel semiconducting material with high thermal conductivity can be integrated into high-power computer chips to cool them down and so improve their performance. The material, boron arsenide, is better at removing heat than the best thermal-management devices available today, according to the US-based researchers who developed it.

Integration of boron arsenide cooling substrates into gallium nitride devices (no public access)