Although the advances achieved in the development of electronic devices and computers have made life easier for us in many aspects, the heat generated by its componentsespecially chips, remains a challenge to overcome.
However, a team of scientists recently discovered the property that a certain silicon isotope to help nanowires made from this material conduct heat better by up to 150% relative to normal silicon.
Thanks to this finding, it would be possible to create computer chips that work at a much lower temperature than current models. The key to achieving this lies in the silicon-28 (Si-28)a particular isotope of silicon that would give nanowires extremely high cooling properties.
There is no doubt that within electronics, cooling technology has advanced rapidly, but as electronic components get smaller, it becomes more difficult to dissipate heat effectively.
When talking about isotopes, these refer to a set of atoms of a certain element that concentrates a different number of neutrons.
On the other hand, the 92% of the existing silicon belongs to the category of Si-28leaving 5% for silicon-29 and the remaining 3% for silicon-30.
Inside a computer chip, in theory, these isotopes should fulfill the same electronic functions. However, previous studies show that anomalies present in both Si-29 and Si-30 can negatively affect heat flow.
In an attempt to demonstrate the efficacy of Si-28, the team arranged a 90-nanometer nanowire of this isotope between two microheating pads. Subsequently, one of them was subjected to an electric current in order to generate heat and cause it to flow through the nanowire to the other pad.
The result was more than surprising for the researchers when they verified that the yield achieved had been 150%widely exceeding the 20% set by them as an expectation, prior to the test.
The researchers feel that their effort could serve as an inspiration in the near future for the development of computer chips that can disperse heat more effectively and that their implementation could become feasible even on smaller scales.
However, isolating silicon-28 from other isotopes is an expensive and complex process to carry out currently, but it is expected that this situation will be corrected in the short term.
