American researchers from the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) announced the development of a new thermal interface material that can effectively remove heat from high-power electronic components, reducing or even completely eliminating the need for active cooling.
It is noted that cooling accounts for about 40% of the energy consumption of a traditional data center. The researchers calculated that the proposed technology could reduce energy costs for cooling by about 13%, i.e. by 5% of the total energy consumption of the data center. This means significant cost savings for hyperscalers and cloud platform operators.
Image Source: UT Austin
The developed material is made from a mixture of liquid metal and aluminum nitride. When obtaining the composition, a special mechanochemical method is used. This process helps the liquid metal and aluminum nitride mix in a specific, controlled manner, resulting in unique properties. The new material is said to conduct heat much better than existing commercial solutions used to cool IT equipment components.
In particular, according to the developers, the thermal interface of the proposed type is capable of removing up to 2760 W of heat from a surface area of 16 cm2. Thanks to this, for example, the energy consumption required to operate the cooling pump can be reduced by 65%. Currently, the resulting material is being tested in laboratory conditions. In the future, the UT Austin team intends to organize full-scale tests with the participation of interested partners in the data center market.