Sandia Labs Develops Revolutionary Heatsink for Microelectronics

The traditional heatsink fan design is one where a fan rotates at a high speed, while placed above a metal heatsink that’s usually made of alumunium or copper. Sandia National Labs in Livermore, California has designed a new heatsink design, which they claim will shake up the conventional air cooling heatsink market. The new Sandia Cooler that’s also known as “Air Bearing Heat Exchanger” was designed by Jeff Koplow, a researcher at Sandia Labs. The new Sandia Cooler uses a slightly different approach. A brushless motor drives a slightly different arrangement of fins which is positioned closely to the base metal heatsink.

Effective, quieter cooling solutions on the horizon

Traditional coolers have dead air that cling to the fins of the heatsink. The new heatsink design should make heatsinks more efficient and also a lot quieter. Sandia Labs is looking out for interested parties who wish to use the mass produce the product for commercial purposes. There’s also benefits to be repeated in other coooling systems in other products such as air conditioners. If used on a large scale, the technology should be able to cut down power consumption by 7 per cent.