SBIR Phase I: Innovative Solid-State Phase Change Cooling to Supercharge Central Processing Unit (CPU) Performance

这个小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力旨在建立一种高性能中央处理器(CPU)热管理的新方法，专注于创新的固体-固体热能存储(TES)材料和硬件的开发和应用。稳态冷却解决方案越来越无法跟上所需的工作频率以及由此产生的温度敏感型计算和电子元件的热负荷。因此，这些组件被节流以减少供暖。这会导致所需的温度降低，但不可避免地会导致时钟速度和性能降低。拟议的项目旨在挑战这一现有的权衡，并生产CPU散热器，可以在不增加重量/体积或电能消耗的情况下，以可扩展和易于部署的插入式外形规格，保持3倍的计算性能。在全球对高性能计算、物联网和手持电子产品需求的推动下，高性能CPU散热器的市场规模正在上升，市场规模约为20.4亿美元，未来十年的复合年增长率为3.73-4.64%。目标固体-固体TES散热器可用于电池快速充电、片上系统设备和电力电子市场。该项目的智能优势在于新发现的热能存储材料，将CPU散热器设计的范式从简单的稳态散热最大化转向将高稳态散热和大容量热存储相结合的优化方法。该第一阶段项目有三个主要研究目标：i)开发分析和数值拓扑优化方法，以确定CPU应用的理想热能存储材料属性和复合热传递/容量结构：ii)利用人工智能框架利用数据驱动的形状记忆合金发现来识别并最终电弧熔化具有高潜热、高导电性、低磁滞和/或基于CPU要求的材料属性理想组合的新型热能存储材料：iii)设计、制造和测试原型，以进行模型验证和概念演示。这些技术努力，加上降低和缓解风险的步骤，以及技术经济和制造分析，将使一系列不断扩大的高功率、热限制应用程序实现跨越式改进。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project aims to establish a new approach to high-performance central processing unit (CPU) thermal management that focuses on the development and application of innovative solid-solid thermal energy storage (TES) materials and hardware. Increasingly, steady-state cooling solutions are unable to keep up with the required operating frequencies and resulting thermal loads of temperature-sensitive computing and electronic components. As a result, these components are throttled down to reduce heating. This results in the desired temperature reduction but inevitably leads to clock speed and performance reductions as well. The proposed project aims to challenge this existing tradeoff and produce CPU heat sinks that can maintain 3X computational performance ‘sprints’ with no added weight/volume nor electrical energy expenditure, in a scalable and easily deployable, drop-in form factor. Fueled by a global demand for high-performance computing, internet-of-things, and handheld electronics, the market for high-performance CPU coolers is rising with a market size of about $2.04 billion and a compound annual growth rate of 3.73-4.64% over the next decade. The target solid-solid TES heatsink is transferable to battery fast charging, system-on-chip devices, and the power electronic market.The intellectual merit of this project resides in newly-identified thermal energy storage materials to shift the paradigm in CPU cooler design away from simply maximizing steady-state heat dissipation towards an optimized approach that combines high steady-state dissipation with high-capacity thermal storage. This Phase I project has three primary research objectives: i) develop analytical and numerical topology optimization approaches to identify ideal thermal energy storage material properties and composite heat transfer/capacity structures for CPU applications: ii) leverage data-driven shape memory alloy discovery using an artificial intelligence framework to identify and ultimately arc-melt new thermal energy storage materials that exhibit high-latent heat, high-conductivity, low hysteresis, and/or the ideal combination of material properties based on CPU requirements: and iii) design, fabricate, and test prototypes for model validation and concept demonstration. These technical efforts, combined with risk reduction and mitigation steps, and techno-economic and manufacturing analysis will enable leap-ahead improvements in an ever-expanding array of high-power, thermally limited applications.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.