PC’S RUN WITH THEIR OWN HEAT RATHER THAN ELECTRICITY

PC’S RUN WITH THEIR OWN HEAT RATHER THAN ELECTRICITY

Computers may soon be able to recycle parts of their own waste heat, using a material being studied by researchers. The material is a semiconductor called gallium manganese arsenide. Researchers at the Ohio state university describe the detection of an effect that converts heat into quantum mechanical phenomenon known as spin in a semiconductor.

Once developed, the effect could enable integrated circuits that run on heat rather than electricity. This research merges two cutting edges technologies: thermo electricity and spintronics, explained team leaders joseph heremans, Ohio eminent scholar in nanotechnology, and Roberts Myers of the Ohio state university.

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 Myers and Heremans have been trying to combine spintronices with thermo-electronics that is, devices that convert heat to electricity.”Spintronics is considered as a possible basis for new computer in part because the technology is claimed to produce no heat. Our measurements shed light on thee thermodynamics of spintronics, and may help address the validity of this claim,” Nature quoted heremans as saying.

 In one possible use of thrermo-spintroniccs, a device could sit atop traditional microprocessor, and siphon waste heat away to run additional memory or computation. The researchers studied how heat can be converted to spin polarization. Scientists at Tohoku University detected the effect in a piece of metal. The new study has provided the first verification of the effect in Gallium Manganese arsenide.