AlN-based aerogel thermo-cooler enabled by enhanced phonon conduction and unconstrained liquid capillarity.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 41381417.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-025-65983-7 and PMC identifier 12698693.
- Licence recorded as CC BY-NC-ND.
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Abstract
Transpiration cooling is a thermal management technique that utilizes the phase change of liquid coolant to effectively dissipate heat. Porous ceramic media play a crucial role in this cooling process by facilitating liquid transport and heat exchange; however, their intermittent capillary action and inter-grain phonon scattering significantly hinder rapid cooling. Here, we propose a strategy to create AlN-based nanofiber aerogel as a transpiration thermo-cooler, featuring vertically aligned channels and monocrystalline nanofibers by combining nanoengineering and multiscale structural assembly techniques. Benefiting from the unconstrained capillarity of aerogel channels, our thermo-coolers exhibit a fast liquid transport rate of up to 8.33 ± 0.026 mm s<sup>-1</sup>, surpassing that of state-of-the-art porous media by one to two orders of magnitude. In addition, the enhanced phonon conduction properties of single-crystal AlN nanofibers enables thermo-coolers to achieve a fast cooling rate of 156.8 °C s<sup>-1</sup>, outperforming advanced cooling materials by a factor of five and making them ideal for various thermal management applications.