Graphene is a rather neat material, a single layer of carbon in a honeycomb shaped crystalline lattice that has some very interesting properties.  For instance the electrical properties are being eyed as a basis for a new transistor as electrons travel incredibly fast over a graphene lattice, rather close to the universal speed limit.  Those transistors are a long ways off but there is another interesting property of graphene, its thermal conductivity is better than that of diamond, the current king of conductivity.  We won't be seeing quite that impressive of a performancefrom what is discussed in this article at nanotechweb, making a pure lattice for cooling would end up costing more than a diamond heatsink, but doping silica with graphene makes it much easier and cheaper to create and it still sports significantly better cooling properties than copper.


"Two-dimensional sheets of carbon atoms could be used to cool computer chips faster than any other material used in electronics today. That is the view of researchers in the US and France, who have measured graphene's thermal conductivity when placed on silica – a commonly employed substrate in electronic devices. They found that graphene conducts heat more than twice as well as copper wires, which are routinely used in electrical interconnects, and 50 times better than silicon thin films."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk