COOLing electronic devices with GRAphene ELEctrons

Project Information

COOLGRAELE

Grant agreement ID: 101069363

DOI

10.3030/101069363

Project closed

EC signature date 6 April 2022

Start date 1 August 2022

End date 31 January 2024

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 150 000,00

Coordinated by

FUNDACIO INSTITUT CATALA DE NANOCIENCIA I NANOTECNOLOGIA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - COOLGRAELE (COOLing electronic devices with GRAphene ELEctrons)

Reporting period: 2022-08-01 to 2024-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The global consumer electronics market, based on components including integrated circuits, batteries, high-speed (opto)electronic systems for data communication applications, etc., has an estimated value around a trillion dollars. One of the major challenges in state-of-the art electronics is thermal management, which aims at avoiding (local) overheating of devices and device components, in order to assure correct functioning and prolonged device lifetimes. The increasing miniaturization and density of components in (micro-)electronic systems leads to an increasing amount of heat creation that requires cooling. Furthermore, novel approaches such as three-dimensional chip stacking, require innovative heat dissipation strategies. Conventional thermal management in electronic systems mainly exploits materials based on aluminum and copper to dissipate heat, while more recently carbon-based materials have been receiving increasing amounts of interest. Particular interest was generated by the extremely high in-plane thermal conductivity found for monolayer graphene. This is around 2,000 W/m/K and therefore almost an order of magnitude larger than that of aluminum and copper, which is in the 200 – 400 W/m/K range. In this project, we aim to develop graphene-based heat dissipation layers with a thermal conductivity that is another order of magnitude larger and to exploit this in electronic devices to avoid breakdown.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

We have fabricated a large amount of electronic devices with different types of thermal management strategies based on layered materials, and have tested their breakdown characteristics. The successful outcome was better thermal management due to the presence of graphene in these devices, as they show a significantly higher breakdown current than devices without graphene.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The proof-of-concept demonstration of improved heat dissipation due to the presence of graphene is a crucial step towards developing more generally applicable graphene-based thermal management in specific industrially relevant (opto)electronic devices.