Researchers at the University of Illinois have confirmed that graphene – sheets of carbon that are one atom thick which can be made into computer chips, have inherent self-cooling capabilities. Scientists have known for a while that graphene can be used just like silicon to manufacture semiconductors however, the thermodynamic advantage of using it has not been completely understood until now.

Silicon-based semiconductors tends to generate heat as electrons travel through a computer chip, thus the size and speed of such devices are limited by the extent at which the heat generated from use can be dissipated. Which is why CPUs tend to be run a slower speeds in smaller computers.

Measuring how much better graphene will be in such an application has proven to be a challenge. After all, the material is one carbon atom thick. Until the ISU research team successfully used the tip of an electron force microscope as a temperature probe. It was the first time temperature measurements have been made at the nanometer level and researchers were surprised by what was revealed.

They found out that at points where the graphene semiconductor touches metal connectors, there was a thermodynamic cooling effect. In effect a nanometer version of piezoelectric cooling and heating crystals like those used in portable electric coolers. And this cooling effect at the contacts can be greater than the heat generated from resistive heating in the rest of the semiconductor. This means that a properly designed computer chip can not only contain vastly more transistors per given area, it can also be operated at higher speeds without any problems of overheating. In fact, one wonders if a poorly designed graphene chip might cool itself too much to introduce problems related to condensation on circuit boards.

Although graphene-based semiconductor design had barely gone over the theoretical stage, this discovery firms up the potential of graphene-based devices and more research funding is expected to our into taking studies to the next level.