Ionic Wind Cooling

[HidEaL]

http://www.tfot.info/content/view/110/59/

The cooling technology under development by Kronos employs a device called an ionic wind pump (also known as an electrostatic fluid accelerator). The basic operating principle of an ionic wind pump is corona discharge, an electrical discharge near a charged conductor caused by the ionization of the surrounding fluid (air). The principle of ionic air propulsion with corona-generated charged particles has been known almost as long as electricity itself. One of the first references to sensing moving air near a charged tube appeared some 300 years ago in a book by Francis Hauksbee and many pioneers of electricity, including Newton, Faraday, and Maxwell, studied this phenomenon. In modern times, corona discharge was utilized in various ways and applied in the photocopying industry, in some air-conditioning systems, in nitrogen lasers, and most notably in air ionizers. Kronos, which develops high efficiency corona-based air filters, attempted to adapt the technology to microprocessor cooling. With the help of N. E. Jewell-Larsen, C. P. Hsu, and A. V. Mamishev from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington and from Intel, they created several working prototypes of a corona discharge CPU cooler, which can silently but effectively cool a modern CPU.

The corona discharge cooler developed by Kronos works in the following manner: A high electric field is created at the tip of the cathode, which is placed on one side of the CPU. The high energy potential causes the oxygen and nitrogen molecules in the air to become ionized (positively charged) and create a corona (a halo of charged particles). Placing a grounded anode at the opposite end of the CPU causes the charged ions in the corona to accelerate towards the anode, colliding with neutral air molecules on the way. During these collisions, momentum is transferred from the ionized gas to the neutral air molecules, resulting in movement of gas towards the anode.

The advantages of the corona-based cooler are obvious: it has no moving parts thereby eliminating certain reliability issues, it can effectively cool even the most advanced and demanding processors and it operates with a near-zero noise level and with moderate energy consumption.

Cumps.