With the rapid advancement of information technology, consumer electronics are evolving at an unprecedented pace. As processing power and integration density of chips continue to increase, thermal management has become an increasingly critical challenge. Inadequate heat dissipation can force chips underclocking or cause system crashes, impacting user experience. Efficient solutions to thermal management are thus crucial for maintaining electronic device performance. In recent years, solid-state electrocaloric cooling technology based on reversible entropy changes during charging/discharging cycles of ferroelectric polymers has attracted significant attention. This technology offers advantages in miniaturization and direct chip integration, enabling rapid heat removal from chip surfaces through applied electric fields. Compared to traditional passive cooling methods such as heat sinks, fans, and liquid cooling, solid-state electrocaloric cooling presents multiple advantages: zero greenhouse warming potential, compact system design, high Carnot cycle efficiency, active cooling capability, and rapid response time, making it an ideal solution for future chip thermal management.
Professor Qun-Dong Shen's group at the school of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, has done pioneering work on electrocaloric smart materials and electromagnetic-driven chip cooling device prototypes (Nat. Commun. 2022, 13, 5849). Recently, the team proposed an innovative design for electrocaloric films by introducing two-dimensional polyamide into ferroelectric polymer. Leveraging unique porous structure and hydrogen bonding of 2D materials, they successfully constructed multiple short-range ordered polar conformations within the electrocaloric polymer matrix. This strategy significantly reduces both intermolecular interactions and the energy barrier for conformational transitions under electric fields. As a result, the composite film achieves doubled cooling efficiency under low-driving electric fields, with a coefficient of performance (COP) about 20. The optimized electrode design demonstrates 2 mm vertical deformation, validating the feasibility of self-driven electrocaloric devices, and resolving previous issues of external driving requirements and low-efficient space utilization.
Molecular interaction between two-dimensional polyamide (2DPA) and ferroelectric polymer chain, and Enhanced Electrocaloric Effect
The team has deeply revealed the regulation mechanism of two-dimensional materials on the microstructure of electrocaloric polymers through density functional theory calculations and phase-field simulations. This research has broken through the constraint of spatial confinement on the electrocaloric performance, and solved the heat dissipation problem in flexible electronics, providing new ideas for the targeted thermal management of chips. This achievement is also of great significance for promoting the application of two-dimensional materials in fields such as electronics, optoelectronics, and energy storage.
The work, titled Two dimensional confinement induced discontinuous chain transitions for augmented electrocaloric cooling, was published in Nature Communications. The first author is Ph.D. candidate Fang Wang, with corresponding authors Professor Qun-Dong Shen and Professor Tiannan Yang from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Professor Wei Li from the Institute of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, Professor Xiaoliang Wang from the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, and Professor Yurong Yang from the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Nanjing University also contributed to this research. This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Key Scientific Issues of Transformative Technologies), the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Education Integrated Research Platform at Nanjing University (List-based Project), and the Engineering Research Center of the Ministry of Education.
Original Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-55726-5