Have you tried using AI to edit a photo? Dropped a question into ChatGPT? Clicked the top results on a search? Those AI results are all part of a huge system that requires massive computing power!
Where is all this computing taking place? Right now, there are fights happening all over the country about where AI companies can build the massive data centers they need to cover all this computing. Why is there a fight? For one, the data centers are enormous, with some covering several football fields. They also consume more electricity than an entire city. And finally, all that computing makes computer circuits hot, which requires water for cooling, sometimes as much as 5 million gallons of water a day. The water consumption of a data center is mind-boggling!
Up until recently, all the best cooling technologies for data center servers relied on copper. This is usually in the form of copper plates in contact with the working computer chips. The copper plates have tubes of water attached that circulate heat away from the chips. These copper connections are important because data centers can only operate as fast as cooling systems can conduct heat away from the servers. 💻
Unfortunately, we've basically reached the end of how useful copper can be in circuits. It just isn't that efficient, which is why we need so much water to help remove heat.
Fortunately, scientists have just found a metal that conducts heat almost three times better than copper! The material is called theta-phase tantalum nitride, and it might be the most effective metal conductor in the world. When typical conductors transfer tiny vibrations of heat away from a source, they are slowed down by electrons or the energy of other pockets of heat moving through the metal. The unusual tantalum nitride metal conductor moves heat with far less resistance than scientists expected.
News of theta-phase tantalum nitride is exciting for the tech industry. Super-efficient computer cooling could allow for more powerful AI data centers with less water usage.
When scientists want to measure how well a material conducts heat, they take a look at three factors: the energy put into the conductor, the distance the heat travels, and the temperature change that occurs. That's why the unit for thermal conductivity is "watts per meter per kelvin." Take a look at the graph below comparing different thermal conductors:
Here are some questions I think of when I look at this graph:
💡Besides tantalum nitride, what materials have a higher thermal conductivity than copper?
💡Popular insulated drinking mugs keep beverages cold or hot for a long time. The mugs are designed with a thin pocket of air between the inside and outside layers of the mug. Use the data to justify why this would be an effective design.
💡Why does the thermal conductivity of water appear on a separate graph?