Self-Adaptive Mechanical Metasurface Enabling Zero-Power-Consumption Thermal Management of Electronic Devices.

Abstract

Effective thermal management is essential for ensuring the reliability of electronic devices. However, conventional thermal management technologies often require significant space or consume substantial power, which limits system integration and alters the electromagnetic performance, including operating bandwidth and efficiency. Here, a zero-power-consumption, self-adaptive mechanical metasurface is introduced that provides dual-mode thermal management. Composed of liquid crystal elastomer and copper, the periodically arranged units harness a thermally driven strain mismatch between these materials to achieve temperature-dependent structural reconfiguration. This mechano-thermal transduction mechanism passively converts excess heat into mechanical energy, thereby providing efficient thermal management for multiple electronic devices in this experimental demonstration. As a proof of concept, by designing the deep-subwavelength unit cells of metasurface without perturbing the surface current distribution of a Vivaldi antenna, it is shown that the mechanical reconfiguration can be decoupled from electromagnetic functionality, thereby enabling the integration of adaptive thermal management with stable electromagnetic performance. This framework effectively combines multi-physics functionality, encompassing thermal, mechanical, and electromagnetic domains. This work not only reveals a previously unexplored application for stimuli-responsive materials but also holds significant promise for various applications, including advanced communication and wearable systems.