« Control and conversion of heat in hybrid cooling nanostructured devices »
ANR funding: 600 000 €
Partners :
IM2NP UMR 7334 (Marseille) : M. Bescond (coordinator), I. Berbezier, L. Favre, N. Cavassilas, A. Ronda, D. Hannani F. Michelini.
LIMMS IRL 2820 (Tokyo) : S. Volz (scientific responsible), M. Nomura, L. Jalabert.
IES UMR 5214 (Montpellier) : E. Tournié (scientific responsible), T. Talierco, J. B. Rodriguez and L. Cerutti.
Energy control and conversion in opto/nano-electronic devices has become one of the most important scientific, industrial, and societal issues to address in the current severe international energy crisis. The miniaturization of nanoelectronic devices indeed leads to higher power densities, resulting in drastic increase of heat generation per unit area. This self-heating effect induces significant reductions in transistor performance and lifetime. On the other hand, the cooling approaches of integrated circuits are based on liquid or air (fans) refrigeration techniques, which refrigerate the entire chip, and are therefore extremely power consuming. This problem is even more exacerbated since the advent of AI (artificial intelligence) and the development of hyperscaler data centers. As a result, the cloud technology already has a larger carbon footprint than air travel. Worse still, the refrigeration of hyperscalers also requires a lot of water. By 2027, the AI industry could consume the equivalent of half the water consumed annually in the UK. If nothing is done, "in a few years' time, AI producers will consume as many resources as entire countries". The core research topic of COCONUT is therefore the development of unprecedently efficient hybrid cooling devices, exploiting both electronic and phononic transport properties at the nanoscale, under electrical or optical stimulation.
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