Your Smartphones Might Sweat To Cool Down In The Future

As it turns out, our smartphones can sweat to cool down, just like us, as stated by experts at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

The invention involves devices releasing water vapors to disperse heat from devices too small to fit fans inside. As electronics are getting smaller yet more powerful, they can get really hot. However, as the components are packed tightly to reduce their size, regular fans seem to be inadequate in this case, according to Ruzhu Wang, a refrigeration engineer.

To deal with the issue of heating, many manufacturers turn to phase change materials, which can absorb heat when they melt. However, the experts behind this idea said that their invention can be 10 times more effective.

What Wang and the team did was to use materials that can take in moisture from the atmosphere and then release vapor when they are heated. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) prove to be the ideal candidate as they can trap a larger amount of water.

MOFs have been used to make water from the air at desert but since they are fairly expensive, practical applications are still limited.

As stated by the team, this invention is ideal for devices that do not run continuously, like our smartphones, charging batteries, as well as telecommunications base stations.

A test involving a microcomputing device proves that the coating of MOF can remove seven degrees from the chip’s temperature when the device is under a heavy workload for 15 minutes.

What the team aims at next is to enhance the thermal conductivity of the material as well as cut the cost to make the coating commercially available.

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