Nanotechnology creates cool chips

A TEAM OF US BOFFINS has designed a nanostructure material that will help CPUs and GPUs keep cool.

The team from Stanford University's Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) have developed a nanostructured thermal tape. The researchers claim that the tape has the high thermal connectivity of copper but, like foam, is flexible enough to expand and contract.

At the moment CPUs and CPUs are stuck in a manufacturing rut because pins' thick soldering bonds on chips cause heat and mechanical stress failure. The nanostructured thermal tape offers thermal conductivity like a metal but also allows the other materials to expand and contact as well. This means chips can be kept cool and therefore will last much longer.

"A big roadblock to increasing the performance of modern chips is hot spots, or millimeter-sized regions of high power generation," said SRC professor Ken Goodson.

"This advance in nanostructured materials and methods will allow us to better cool these spots and serves as a key enabler for densification of computational circuitry."

The professor said the nanostructured thermal tape can "help packaging withstand the demands of Moore's Law," and his colleague was equally effusive.

"This new thermal nanotape revolutionises the chip's heat sink contact," said the SRC director of interconnect and packaging sciences, Jon Candelaria.

Patents are pending for the nanostructured thermal tape but the SRC boffins reckon that punters will see its commercial application by 2014. µ