Scientists mix copper with diamonds for better cooling

[Andreas G]

That a big and powerful cooler cost quite a penny is not news and the price is often directly related to how much copper it uses. Copper has better heat conducting than aluminum but at the same time costs more. Scientists at Fraunhofer-Forscher has now developed a material with 1.5 times the heat conductance as regular copper. They mixed regular metallic copper with diamond powder and even if it is a bit tricky to get a stable mix of diamond and copper, the carbon constellation offers up to 5 times as high heat conductance.

The material that hasn't been named yet may be used in future cooling products. Among other notebooks is a highly attractive target as it has high requirements for effective cooling. A big problem could be the cost as copper is a lot cheaper than diamonds, even the amount of pressurized carbon used in the mixed is fairly small.