Berkeley Vanadium Dioxide Discovery

[FrgMstr]

For us science nerds, this is a discovery that will likely get you thinking of all sorts of applications that this could be useful in. They are telling us that vanadium dioxide conducts electricity but does not conduct heat. The thoughts of how this could be utilized in engines alone is fairly incredible. Thanks to Ski from the forums for the heads up.

There’s a known rule-breaker among materials, and a new discovery by an international team of scientists adds more evidence to back up the metal’s nonconformist reputation. According to a new study led by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and at the University of California, Berkeley, electrons in vanadium dioxide can conduct electricity without conducting heat.

“The electrons were moving in unison with each other, much like a fluid, instead of as individual particles like in normal metals,” said Wu. “For electrons, heat is a random motion. Normal metals transport heat efficiently because there are so many different possible microscopic configurations that the individual electrons can jump between. In contrast, the coordinated, marching-band-like motion of electrons in vanadium dioxide is detrimental to heat transfer as there are fewer configurations available for the electrons to hop randomly between.”

 

[Lazorz_Go_PewPew]

Secret Ryzen tech revealed!
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[Deleted member 245375]

And this could be useful in processors, RAM, etc, if it works as I suspect it does (or should). Hell, I always thought we've had the perfect heatsink material since the mid-1970s: the same ceramic composite material used to create the Space Shuttle's heat shield tiling but of course since it's proprietary nobody has ever put it to such uses. Imagine homes layered in that kind of material that can stay a consistent temperature regardless of being in direct sunlight or not (could build homes in the hottest places on Earth if needed and nobody would suffer for it), or of course as noted above engines and other such mechanical devices where heat causes expansion even on the microscopic levels which causes more friction between moving parts even in spite of lubrication, etc.

Still one of my all-time fave videos that demonstrates just how awesome that heat tile material is (lower the volume before hitting Play, it's fairly loud):



Fascinating possibilities, without a doubt.

 

[Dan_D]

The applications for such a material are almost limitless. Depending on its tensile strength it could be used for engines, armor, fire fighters gear, electronics, firearms, engines, spacecraft, and things I'm probably not even considering.

 

[Deleted member 245375]

Now couple that with graphene and voila, sooner or later we've gonna have Adamantium.

 

[DejaWiz]

I want an insulated travel mug lined with it between the outer and inner materials. Oh, and a superconductor. Thanks.

 

[Darunion]

next up, unlimited energy arc reactor! palladium core pssh

 

[Elios]

heh effectively a room temperature super conductor

 

[blkt]

Dangle technology in front of us and then remind us we can't have it. Where's our Quantum-Photonic-Silicon-Graphene-Carbon-Nanotube computer with Memristor technology and Holographic Storage option? I feel like I missed a few. In all seriousness, I hope this kind of research makes it into our daily lives ASAP.

 

[DocSavage]

And this could be useful in processors, RAM, etc, if it works as I suspect it does (or should). Hell, I always thought we've had the perfect heatsink material since the mid-1970s: the same ceramic composite material used to create the Space Shuttle's heat shield tiling but of course since it's proprietary nobody has ever put it to such uses. Imagine homes layered in that kind of material that can stay a consistent temperature regardless of being in direct sunlight or not (could build homes in the hottest places on Earth if needed and nobody would suffer for it), or of course as noted above engines and other such mechanical devices where heat causes expansion even on the microscopic levels which causes more friction between moving parts even in spite of lubrication, etc.

Still one of my all-time fave videos that demonstrates just how awesome that heat tile material is (lower the volume before hitting Play, it's fairly loud):



Fascinating possibilities, without a doubt.

That stuff is more a perfect insulator than a perfect heat conductor. It's the opposite of what you'd want to cool your processor

 

[Deleted whining member 223597]

Dangle technology in front of us and then remind us we can't have it. Where's our Quantum-Photonic-Silicon-Graphene-Carbon-Nanotube computer with Memristor technology and Holographic Storage option? I feel like I missed a few. In all seriousness, I hope this kind of research makes it into our daily lives ASAP.

The reason you rarely see any of this in products is because it's either way too expensive or not commercially viable. Making cool things in labs is great, but making millions of kgs of it is going to be quite a bit different.

 

[amddragonpc]

Coherent electrons? Incredible!

 

[blkt]

The reason you rarely see any of this in products is because it's either way too expensive or not commercially viable. Making cool things in labs is great, but making millions of kgs of it is going to be quite a bit different.

I understand this; it was a joke hence the asshat. Thanks for clarifying though.

 

[Mong00se]

So correct me if I'm wrong, but if you used this material to make circuits they wouldn't generate heat in the fist place?

 

[jardows]

The reason you rarely see any of this in products is because it's either way too expensive or not commercially viable. Making cool things in labs is great, but making millions of kgs of it is going to be quite a bit different.

This brings up a great question - does anyone know how commercially viable this could be? How rare is vanadium, and how difficult is it to synthesize vanadium dioxide? Is it stable? How well does it scale?

A heatless electrical engine would be so much more efficient, needing much less power. On the small scale, think of the power we could get in tiny mechanical devices. On the large scale, electric vehicles (not just cars, but trains, OTR trucks, train engines for that matter) could become nearly ubiquitous. Obviously, for microelectronics, transferring electrons without heat could ramp up the computing ability, at the same time shrink exponentially

 

[Deleted member 245375]

That stuff is more a perfect insulator than a perfect heat conductor. It's the opposite of what you'd want to cool your processor

I don't want it as part of the processor, that's why I said specifically as a heat sink which is what it excels at: taking heat from another source and dissipating it internally and remaining cool while doing it. Making a heat sink - not the processor, or the processor core material or the ceramic of the body itself but that could work as well - and placing it on top of the TIM which is pretty much the standard nowadays along with some thermal compound to ensure a good mating aspect would mean this type of material would wick away the heat produced from the processor itself like a Shamwow sucks up water.

Just as placing it inside that furnace pulls heat from the ambient area inside the furnace internally to the material itself it would do the same thing sitting on top of a processor, no fans necessary regardless of how "hot" the CPU would hope to get but get cooled whether it likes it or not. With modern processors capping out at about 100C aka 212F absolute max operating temps aka TjMax that's nothing compared to what that material does in that video at 2200F+ aka 1205C give or take a few points.

Who knows what kind of speeds you could overclock to, no LN2 required.

 

[Lunas]

Humm I was thinking cell phones tablets and laptops heat management soc and printed circuits partially or completely made using vandium dioxide traces and lithography a soc that doesn't produce heat at all vastly reduce the heat generated by the internals thus reducing or eliminating throttling. From what I read though that does not seem to be an application for this. The article seemed focused on window coatings and using this to harness heat to make electricity.

 

[nightanole]

So correct me if I'm wrong, but if you used this material to make circuits they wouldn't generate heat in the fist place?

Sort of. The traces would not generate heat. The main story is properly doped, it is a metal that would not conduct heat. So imagine an engine with cylinder walls and exhaust maninfolds lined with stuff, you would not need a cooling system.

 

[AK0tA]

“The electrons were moving in unison with each other, much like a fluid, instead of as individual particles like in normal metals,”

I found this the more interesting part, fluid motion must be much more controlable than random motion. My brain is thinking greater amounts of current with much less energy and much more and finer control of what that current can do. I also read I could someday power my home with the same energy needed to power a current light bulb, scaled up I see electronic propulsion a viable thing.

 

[Draax]

There have been some really cool materials manufactured recently. My favorite is metallic hydrogen. Basically liquid hydrogen is compressed to a state where the molecules associate and create an atomic metal. I can't seem to find a straight answer on if this material stays a metal at room temperature. If it is metastable .... we are taking a superconductor at room temperature, amongst many other uses such as a new kind of rocket propellant. (convert metastable metallic hydrogen to molecular hydrogen)

 

[TwistedAegis]

Pretty amazing. So by mixing with other metals they can lower the point at which it starts to conduct heat, so a wall insulation for example when it's too hot it will start to dissipate heat until it hits the desired temp, then it will become an insulator again.

 

[bman212121]

Coherent electrons? Incredible!

It's hard to tell by the wording if it's completely coherent or just mostly, but either way it's definitely a lot better than most. The first thing that I thought of was this would make an excellent cable. The distance limitations on things like Cat5 might be greatly improved, as well as reduced cross talk because electrons aren't scattering in all directions. If it performs similar to laser inside of a fiber optic cable it could be an interesting alternative.

 

[Uvaman2]

And this could be useful in processors, RAM, etc, if it works as I suspect it does (or should). Hell, I always thought we've had the perfect heatsink material since the mid-1970s: the same ceramic composite material used to create the Space Shuttle's heat shield tiling but of course since it's proprietary nobody has ever put it to such uses. Imagine homes layered in that kind of material that can stay a consistent temperature regardless of being in direct sunlight or not (could build homes in the hottest places on Earth if needed and nobody would suffer for it), or of course as noted above engines and other such mechanical devices where heat causes expansion even on the microscopic levels which causes more friction between moving parts even in spite of lubrication, etc.

Still one of my all-time fave videos that demonstrates just how awesome that heat tile material is (lower the volume before hitting Play, it's fairly loud):



Fascinating possibilities, without a doubt.

I always think those tiles are ceramic meringue...

 

[NeoNemesis]

I don't want it as part of the processor, that's why I said specifically as a heat sink which is what it excels at: taking heat from another source and dissipating it internally and remaining cool while doing it. Making a heat sink - not the processor, or the processor core material or the ceramic of the body itself but that could work as well - and placing it on top of the TIM which is pretty much the standard nowadays along with some thermal compound to ensure a good mating aspect would mean this type of material would wick away the heat produced from the processor itself like a Shamwow sucks up water.

Just as placing it inside that furnace pulls heat from the ambient area inside the furnace internally to the material itself it would do the same thing sitting on top of a processor, no fans necessary regardless of how "hot" the CPU would hope to get but get cooled whether it likes it or not. With modern processors capping out at about 100C aka 212F absolute max operating temps aka TjMax that's nothing compared to what that material does in that video at 2200F+ aka 1205C give or take a few points.

Who knows what kind of speeds you could overclock to, no LN2 required.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you want something highly conductive as your heatsink, not something highly insulative. Silver would be the absolute best heatsink material possible (ignoring oxidation/cost).

"...the insulation prevented heat transfer to the underlying orbiter aluminum skin and structure. These tiles were such poor heat conductors that one could hold one by the edges while it was still red hot."

 

[Nolan7689]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you want something highly conductive as your heatsink, not something highly insulative. Silver would be the absolute best heatsink material possible (ignoring oxidation/cost).

"...the insulation prevented heat transfer to the underlying orbiter aluminum skin and structure. These tiles were such poor heat conductors that one could hold one by the edges while it was still red hot."

The way I think it's meant is that the material will take the heat, but does not conduct it back outwards.

 

[Xrave]

Right now this looks like a material you could use for routing, casing, shielding, etc. It's not a semiconductor device.

So you can't build a CPU out of this material (or at least one that has the transistor density we are used to today) and have it generate no heat. The normal CPUs we have today would still generate all that heat and you would still want a copper heatsink to pull off that heat so the CPU doesn't break. Assuming you could fabricate it cheaply/thin enough, you would want to build the motherboard out of this material so that the CPU heat doesn't transfer to nearby electronics; ignoring the normal heat dissipation you DO want through the motherboard to keep the CPU cool. Chip design would still be on silicon, or other semiconducting materials.

Also an internal combution engine will still generate heat from the combustion, and more-so the friction of the pistons. Using this material to make the engine has the problem that you are trapping all that heat inside the engine if it can't radiate outwards.

 

[whateverer]

Sort of. The traces would not generate heat. The main story is properly doped, it is a metal that would not conduct heat. So imagine an engine with cylinder walls and exhaust maninfolds lined with stuff, you would not need a cooling system.

Uhh, no of course you would STILL NEED a cooling system if you used this in your engine parts. The Otto cycle itself (along with friction) is the inefficient part, and that doesn't change with this material. This material just means the parts that use this don't conduct heat like a metal does, meaning you'd BETTER NOT use this inside a hot place like an engine. The entire concept of cooling an engine DEPENDS on the thermal conductivity of metal, it's the whole reason air-cooled engines work!



This material is good for cases where you want the electrical conductivity of a metal, but not the added thermal conductivity of a metal. Like say, control/LOW power wires used inside a super-cooled Cryogenic system. Like the Tokamac reactor, for instance

http://www.ialtenergy.com/tokamak-fusion-reactor.html

 

[DLGenesis]

The way I think it's meant is that the material will take the heat, but does not conduct it back outwards.

how would it cool down?

 

[Tawnos]

So correct me if I'm wrong, but if you used this material to make circuits they wouldn't generate heat in the fist place?

Wires alone do not semiconductors make . You need a way to turn on and off a connection to make most useful circuits (processors).

 

[Deleted member 93354]

how would it cool down?

It just has @#$@# poor thermal conductivity. It would hold the heat, but radiate it slowly like coal.

And if you shove too much current through it, it will generate a lot of heat and hold onto it.

 

[endalykt]

But will it help Microsoft make a good Windows? Will it cure Bugthesta from their bugitis? Will it stop Piranha Games from raping MechWarrior? Will it smack some sense into EA? Will it download my porn faster? Will it make me a sandwich?

Will it do ANYTHING useful? :/ Or is that kind of tech still too far in the future...?

 

[whateverer]

It just has @#$@# poor thermal conductivity. It would hold the heat, but radiate it slowly like coal.

And if you shove too much current through it, it will generate a lot of heat and hold onto it.

The problem is, getting the heat in there. It's going to go in just as slowly as it come out.

Coal gets glowing-hot pretty quickly due to heat being added by flame, and then it takes longer for those coals to go out, because the ashes keep building up, creating more insulation. That means the THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY of a hot coal is constantly changing (same property people use in banking a fire to make the coals last).

This stuff would be slow to accept heat, and slow to radiate heat AT ALL TIMES, because it doesn't have the advantage of the changing physical state of a hot coal. It's always a poor thermal conductor.

And just because this is a poor heat conductor doesn't make an electrical superconductor, like some of you are thinking. If it were, they would have specifically used the word in the article, and talked about how to replace entire power delivery systems with this tech.

No, I'm sure this wire has electrical resistance, which means since it's hard to cool, there's a fairly low limit on the amount of electricity you can pull through this, and not melt it.

 

[Lunas]

Wires alone do not semiconductors make . You need a way to turn on and off a connection to make most useful circuits (processors).

Vanadium dioxide has the added benefit of being transparent below about 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), and absorptive of infrared light above 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit).

It can switch from an insulator to a metal at 152F but that temp is lowered by adding tungsten.

 

[NoOther]

So I had a good conversation with our PhD of Chemistry here at work about this discovery (of which he was quite interested and read the actual scientific paper on). So I will endeavor to pass on his information about your comments and questions, but first a summary of the purpose of this discovery:

The purpose of this new material is to reduce the amount of heat generated by electricity flowing through circuits. Most importantly transistors. So the main application would be in very small electronics that are packed close together and generate a lot of heat. Also, with this technology you would be able to layer more transistors on top of each other with less space in between. The biggest factor here is not exactly the heat, but the power. In effect, it is allowing you to use far, far less power for the same performance. Currently you lose energy from the dissipation of heat in the circuit. Therefore, if you cut down the amount of heat, you can reduce the amount of power and still get the same or better performance.

Now, the second part of this, which is what many of the comments revolve around is combining this with other materials for various purposes (like the engine, window coatings, etc.) Apparently the problem with these applications is that they are all very expensive and would take decades to figure out. The science involved with the Vanadium dioxide is the crystal lattice structure it holds which provides its unique quality. In order to get this to work with other materials you need to find the right materials that line up with the lattice structure, or else it loses its benefits. Different lattice structures will work against each other. This is my understanding based on his rather more lengthy and scientific dissertation on the topic.

Now on to the comments:

And this could be useful in processors, RAM, etc, if it works as I suspect it does (or should). Hell, I always thought we've had the perfect heatsink material since the mid-1970s: the same ceramic composite material used to create the Space Shuttle's heat shield tiling but of course since it's proprietary nobody has ever put it to such uses. Imagine homes layered in that kind of material that can stay a consistent temperature regardless of being in direct sunlight or not (could build homes in the hottest places on Earth if needed and nobody would suffer for it), or of course as noted above engines and other such mechanical devices where heat causes expansion even on the microscopic levels which causes more friction between moving parts even in spite of lubrication, etc.

Still one of my all-time fave videos that demonstrates just how awesome that heat tile material is (lower the volume before hitting Play, it's fairly loud):

Fascinating possibilities, without a doubt.

This would not work well as a heat sink. After all it is not a heat dissipator, but a more perfect conducter of electricity not heat. The way heatsinks work is they soak up the heat and then dissipate it to another medium, like water or air. I suppose you could combine it with some other material to try and achieve this purpose, but at a high cost.

That stuff is more a perfect insulator than a perfect heat conductor. It's the opposite of what you'd want to cool your processor

Actually it would not work well as an insulator either for the same reasons as above. It's the combination with other materials that it could be used to absorb heat and turn it into energy. It would be fairly expensive to achieve this anytime in the near future though apparently. It actually would help keep your processor cool though, as explained in my opening paragraph. That is exactly its purpose, but not by dissipating heat.

So correct me if I'm wrong, but if you used this material to make circuits they wouldn't generate heat in the fist place?

No. Heat would still be generated, just at a much, much lower rate. I think it even mentions in the article, the heat generated is far less than the normal heat generated today.

The reason you rarely see any of this in products is because it's either way too expensive or not commercially viable. Making cool things in labs is great, but making millions of kgs of it is going to be quite a bit different.

Correct. Trying to use this in large quantities like some big engine is not practical, first, because that isn't its use case as its purpose is to conduct electricity and secondly as you mentioned, cost. It would be too cost prohibitive in such large quantities.

 

[DocSavage]

Thanks for the update, NoOther! Just a couple things I noticed.

The science involved with the Vanadium dioxide is the crystal lattice structure it holds which provides its unique quality. In order to get this to work with other materials you need to find the right materials that line up with the lattice structure, or else it loses its benefits. Different lattice structures will work against each other. This is my understanding based on his rather more lengthy and scientific dissertation on the topic.

They are already successful in modifying the lattice structure. From the linked article: Notably, the amount of electricity and heat that vanadium dioxide can conduct is tunable by mixing it with other materials. When the researchers doped single crystal vanadium dioxide samples with the metal tungsten, they lowered the phase transition temperature at which vanadium dioxide becomes metallic. At the same time, the electrons in the metallic phase became better heat conductors. This enabled the researchers to control the amount of heat that vanadium dioxide can dissipate by switching its phase from insulator to metal and vice versa, at tunable temperatures.

This would not work well as a heat sink. After all it is not a heat dissipator, but a more perfect conducter of electricity not heat. The way heatsinks work is they soak up the heat and then dissipate it to another medium, like water or air. I suppose you could combine it with some other material to try and achieve this purpose, but at a high cost.

This insulator comment was in reference to the Space Shuttle insulation blocks in a video Tiberian posted above. It has no bearing to the vanadium dioxide you are talking about.

 

[NoOther]

Thanks for the update, NoOther! Just a couple things I noticed.


They are already successful in modifying the lattice structure. From the linked article: Notably, the amount of electricity and heat that vanadium dioxide can conduct is tunable by mixing it with other materials. When the researchers doped single crystal vanadium dioxide samples with the metal tungsten, they lowered the phase transition temperature at which vanadium dioxide becomes metallic. At the same time, the electrons in the metallic phase became better heat conductors. This enabled the researchers to control the amount of heat that vanadium dioxide can dissipate by switching its phase from insulator to metal and vice versa, at tunable temperatures.

I understand that, which is why I put that whole second paragraph in my explanation. According to our resident PhD chemist, combining materials to get the lattice structures to match is a process that can take decades. He provided the example of Solar Cells. (Now I don't know all the science here, but will try to explain it from how I understand it) There are 3 types of light rays they can capture with the panels. Each type requires a different lattice structure to capture the light and then needs to transport that energy. For a long time they could get any of the three to work independently, which provided about 20% efficiency. It wasn't for nearly 2 decades that they could get 2 of those panels to work together to boost the efficiency to 40%. It will likely take even longer for them to be able to incorporate the third to get to 60% efficiency. Just because there may be materials that will work with the vanadium, does not mean you can get the lattice structures to mesh properly for the transfer of heat/energy for the effect you want.

So in other words for the applications like the window coverings and the engine components, the good doctor was quite dubious they could get that to work to any real effect in the immediate future. He was however intrigued and I think he may do a deeper dive on it.

This insulator comment was in reference to the Space Shuttle insulation blocks in a video Tiberian posted above. It has no bearing to the vanadium dioxide you are talking about.

Noted.

 

[DocSavage]

I understand that, which is why I put that whole second paragraph in my explanation...

I have a better understanding now. Many thanks!

 

[Lifelite]

This stuff sounds like it's going to make overclocking boring

 

[bwanaaa]

here is the paper that has its primary author at Berkeley
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6323/371.full

Here is a paper from 2013 that describes another interesting property:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/oct/25/natural-metamaterial-looks-cooler-when-heated
As you heat vanadium dioxide up from room temp to 80 degreesC, something weird happens. As soon as you hit 74 degrees C it looks much cooler- more like 20 degrees C

It also changes from being an insulator to a conductor of electricity.

So the issue of 'not conducting heat' is confusing. It is known that it can appear colder to infrared cameras than it really is. This does not necessarily mean it does not conduct heat.

 

[Parja]

The purpose of this new material is to reduce the amount of heat generated by electricity flowing through circuits. Most importantly transistors. So the main application would be in very small electronics that are packed close together and generate a lot of heat.

You pretty much described a microprocessor.