Reporter Wu Chunxin, Correspondent Gao Xiang
Statistical data shows that for every 2 ℃ increase in temperature, the reliability of electronic components decreases by 10%. Reducing the temperature of electronic components during operation is of great significance for improving reliability, precision, and service life. How to solve the problem of greatly reducing the efficiency of electronic components in high-temperature environments has become a research focus.
Recently, Professor Gao Liang's team from the School of Mechanical Science and Engineering at Huazhong University of Science and Technology has designed a variety of thermal stealth metamaterials with free form, independent background temperature, and omnidirectional functions, which can shield the interference of external temperature fields on internal objects of devices, achieve active insulation, and can be used for thermal protection of thermal sensitive components. The relevant research results have recently been published in the international journal "Advanced Materials".
By controlling the heat flow, achieve extraordinary heat function
In recent years, researchers have obtained metamaterials with extraordinary physical properties by reasonably designing the structural configuration of materials. Among them, thermal metamaterials, as a type of metamaterial, have important application potential in fields such as energy efficient utilization and thermal management of electronic power components.
In theory, by designing the structural configuration of thermal metamaterials, the manipulation and control of heat flow can be achieved, thereby achieving supernormal thermal functions such as thermal stealth, thermal concentration, thermal camouflage, and thermal rotation.
At present, achieving the thermal stealth function of electronic components involves placing thermal stealth metamaterials around the components or covering them to isolate most of the external heat.
The materials used for heat shielding mainly include the following types: nanocomposites, porous ceramic materials, carbon nanotubes, and thermal metamaterials mixed with natural materials, "said Xiao Mi, a professor from the School of Mechanical Science and Engineering at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, a member of the research team mentioned above
The research team proposed a deep learning enabled topology optimization design method for thermal metamaterials, achieving intelligent design of free form thermal metamaterials.
This method adopts a deep generation model, which can automatically and in real-time generate topological functional units with target thermal conductivity tensors based on the customized functional requirements of thermal metamaterials, thereby quickly generating thermal metamaterials.
Based on this approach, the research team designed thermal stealth metamaterials and verified their excellent thermal stealth function through numerical simulation and thermal experiments.
The thermal metamaterial designed by the research team is a mixture of natural materials, but it has extraordinary thermal properties that natural materials do not have, and the natural materials inside the metamaterial are usually unevenly distributed and anisotropic.
Xiao Mi said that the principle of heat shielding for such materials is to optimize the reasonable distribution of materials, allowing heat to bypass specific areas and achieve heat shielding.
Achievements in heat shielding both domestically and internationally
Currently, research on thermal metamaterials in heat shielding has made some progress both domestically and internationally.
Internationally, professors Narayana and Sato from Harvard University in the United States utilized two different approaches based on the effective medium theory
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