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

这个小企业创新研究第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/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，重点是开发和应用创新的固体-固体热能储存（TES）材料和硬件。越来越多的稳态冷却解决方案无法满足对温度敏感的计算和电子元件所需的工作频率和产生的热负荷。因此，这些组件被节流以减少加热。这将导致预期的温度降低，但不可避免地导致时钟速度和性能降低。该项目旨在挑战这种现有的权衡，并生产出CPU散热器，该散热器可以在不增加重量/体积或电能消耗的情况下保持3倍的计算性能，并且具有可扩展且易于部署的插入式外形。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散热器市场正在增长，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%。目标固态固态TES散热器可转移到电池快速充电，片上系统设备和电力电子市场。这个项目的智力价值在于新发现的热能储存材料，将CPU冷却器设计的范例从简单地最大化稳态散热转向优化的方法，将高稳态散热与高容量热储存相结合。这个第一阶段的项目有三个主要的研究目标：I)开发分析和数值拓扑优化方法，以确定理想的热能储存材料性能和CPU应用的复合传热/容量结构；ii)利用数据驱动的形状记忆合金发现，使用人工智能框架来识别并最终电弧熔化具有高潜热、高导电性、低迟滞和/或基于CPU要求的材料性能的理想组合的新型热能存储材料；iii)设计、制造和测试原型，用于模型验证和概念演示。这些技术努力，结合风险降低和缓解措施，以及技术经济和制造分析，将在不断扩大的大功率、热限制应用中实现跨越式改进。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.