New heatsink material maybe?

GeezerButler · 10 Mar 2010 at 21:23

Wonder when we will se a TRUE made out of this - MIT scientists transform polyethylene into a heat-conducting material. And it only conducts heat in ONE direction - potential for making a directional heatsink?

Source:

http://web.mit.edu/press/2010/heat-nanofibers.html

mod1fied · 10 Mar 2010 at 22:33

Without fully reading the article, how do you get rid of the heat? Surely it has a limit of how much heat it can conduct.

Or have I got the wrong end of the stick.

bhavv · 10 Mar 2010 at 23:05

I dont think you can make fins out of that stuff, only one big lump or it would just break easilly.

JonJ678 · 10 Mar 2010 at 23:58

Polyethylene has a conductivity of 0.4 to 0.5 in standard units, the link thinks they've manged three hundred times this so 150. That's significantly below aluminium and below copper but still a good achievment.

It'll be brittle, inclined to split along the conducting direction. Wont be possible to injection mould it, or heat treat it. In short it'll be hell to work with.

More important, conduction isn't so important in current heatsinks. The heatpipes act to move heat along their length far more effectively than solid copper round. Hence most of them being aluminium.