A research team of several scientists came up with an interesting discovery, an alloy of three elements can better use heat from processors and change it back to electricity. And not only that.
Change heat from processors back to electricity? This concept was invented by scientists from several European companies, and this innovation partially solves the problem of increasing energy consumption in new electronic components. The addition of tin to germanium reduced the material’s thermal conductivity while retaining its electrical properties, making it ideal for thermoelectric phenomena.
The research was carried out by teams from the Forschungszentrum Jülich, the IHP – Leibniz Institute for High Performance Microelectronics, the University of Pisa, the University of Bologna and the University of Leeds. About 1.2 exajoules of low-temperature heat are wasted annually in Europe, which corresponds to the energy consumption of Austria or Romania.
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This technology promises not only to increase energy efficiency, but also to improve the performance of electronic devices. Combining thermoelectric, photonic and spintronic functions on a single chip can make future electronic devices more compact and powerful. In short, the processor would actually be able to use its waste heat (not only heat in the future) and partially use it for its reverse power supply. Plus, thanks to the alloy, it shouldn’t heat up as much. However, scientists have not yet described how the entire process works in detail. The entire development is just at the beginning and it will take some time before we see real deployment on processors.
Source: pctuning.cz
