The Brown & White

Electronic devices are getting hotter as more heat-generating transistors are being crammed onto each microchip, but one Lehigh professor hopes to change that.

Slava Rotkin, an assistant physics professor, has been working with a team to develop nanotube technology that will help cool electronics, such as laptops.

"Having started working with carbon-based nanomaterials since the mid '90s and with heat dissipation being the most challenging problems in modern silicon nanoelectronic devices, my choice to research it was natural," Rotkin said.

The technology works by using nanotube or nanowires to channel heat through intermolecular forces to a polar substrate, such as silicon dioxide, through "near-field" radiation. Rotkin said having a computer at a lower temperature is safer and prevents computer crashes. As temperatures within the laptop increase, the probability of a random error occurring increases exponentially, he said.

"The cooler the electronics inside your laptop are, the safer your work is," Rotkin said.

The same technology could help reduce energy use by cooling electronics more efficiently, he said. Even though laptops do not use a lot of energy individually, the amount of energy used by all laptop users can add up to a lot.

"Saving even a small amount of this power would help us going green,'" he said.

The technology is in its early stages and there is a long way to go before a device will be cooled through this technology, Rotkin said.

"This is just a first theoretical demonstration of the fundamental physics of the effect," he said.

Rotkin said he is looking forward to developing this for use in industry.

"I cannot predict whether this will solve the heat dissipations problems or there will be another better solution in the future," Rotkin said. "What I know for sure: our knowledge about the nature of energy dissipation in nanoscale devices became a little bit deeper."

Students had mixed reactions about the new technology Rotkin and his colleagues have been developing.

Doug Lambert, '11, said he thought the nanotube laptop cooling system would not be necessary.

"Ninety-nine percent of laptops that hit the market are stupid-proof and don't overheat unless you wrap them in an afghan while sitting in bed," he said.

Karol Zieba, '11, said he thinks the technology looks promising, but he would mostly be concerned with the cost.

"Right now, my laptop doesn't generate enough heat to warrant a potentially expensive change," he said.

Overheating laptops are not an issue during normal use, Dan Cheek, '11, said.

"If it actually works, they should be able to start making more powerful computers now that the heat problem is overcome, which is exciting," he said.

Cheek said he hopes the technology can be applied to desktop computers as well because his desktop overheats more often than his laptop.