NANOmaterial-enhanced two-phase COOLing for breakthrough thermal management systems

Our global technological infrastructure depends on producing smaller, faster, and energy-efficient electronic devices. However, the miniaturisation needed to increase power density leads to larger heat

fluxes, representing a bottleneck for next-generation electronics. Current thermal management systems (TMS) are both inadequate and inefficient, requiring vast natural resources. Novel, energy-efficient, and ultrahigh performance TMS are urgently needed in order to sustain economic growth while combating climate change.

Nanomaterial-enhanced two-phase cooling has recently shown immense promise, but limitations in our understanding of nanoscale interfacial heat transfer - where the nanocoating or nanostructure meets the coolant liquid and where the liquid meets its vapour - in experiments has prevented this promise from being realised. The proposed work is of fundamental engineering science which will radically improving our understanding of interfacial heat transfer. This will be achieved by:

i) combining molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and interfacial phonon analysis to develop new theoretical models for heat transfer across simple solid/liquid interfaces; ii) developing machine-learning-powered MD to extend this approach to realistic nanomaterials and coolant liquids; and

iii) building a first-of-its-kind multiphysics simulation toolkit for TMS design, and validating against novel experiments in two case studies involving emerging nanomaterial-enhanced TMS: a) pool boiling using nanocoated surfaces; and b) evaporative cooling within nanoporous membranes.

NANO-COOL will fill critical knowledge gaps and open an entirely new research field: "Simulation-driven design of nanomaterial-enhanced two-phase cooling for electronics". Results of NANO-COOL will be

published as open-source models, open-access articles, and open data repositories. The long-term ambition of NANO-COOL is to become the enabling framework for novel two-phase TMS design.