Chill Out

Electronic engineers are searching for innovative ways to remove heat from electronic devices. One promising approach is to incorporate materials that have a high thermal conductivity into the chip, such as diamond and carbon nanotubes. The room-temperature thermal conductivity of carbon nanotubes is even higher than that of diamonds around 3000 to 3500 W/m.K. Because carbon nanotubes are also excellent electrical conductors, researchers are exploring using them as transistor channels and interconnects and as thermal vias. Potentially better than either diamond or carbon nanotubes is graphene, which is a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon arranged in a honeycomb lattice. Researchers have proposed using graphene in carbon or hybrid silicon-carbon electronics and in ultrasensitive detectors. Graphene could be used for making heat-dissipating, electrically conducting interconnects between transistors. Incorporating graphene into chip designs could yield devices that are faster, less noisy, and run cooler.