Many people know the problem of cooling processors and other chips well.As the technological norms for manufacturing decrease, the problem becomes more acute as the energy density increases dramatically.Scientists have found that silicon can only increase the efficiency of heat dissipation by increasing its isotopic purity.Experiments have shown that the \"natural\" heat sink of chips can be increased up to 2.5 times.Image source: Junqiao Wu/Berkeley LabAs you know, all silicon in our nature consists of three stable forms of isotopes: about 92% is silicon-28 (28Si), 5% - silicon-29 (29Si) and 3% - silicon-30 (30Si).No one purifies silicon to make chips, although early studies showed that the silicon-28 isotope has the best thermal conductivity of all silicon isotopes, and impurities 29Si and 30Si impurities interrupt heat fluxes.It was believed that the gain barely exceeds 10% with significantly increasing costs of purification.Scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.Lawrence Berkeley set up an experiment in which they tried to assess the degree of influence of silicon purification on the heat sink.They connected two thermocouples with nanowires 90 nm wide and measured the heat transfer.It turned out that pure silicon-28 improves heat transfer from the heating element to the other by 150%, not 10%, as previously thought.On closer examination it turned out that the surface of the nanowire was covered with silicon dioxide, which prevented parasitic heat dissipation across the surface of the wire, and the heat flow was concentrated in its center.Scientists do not give any recipes for the organization of the heat sink from the chips in a new way.But they showed the possibility of multiplying the efficiency of heat removal from the crystals, which will be worth the candle - the cost of producing isotope-pure silicon for future chips.
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