Boiling Inhibition and High-Flux Evaporation with Engineered Thin Hydrogel Coating

As computing devices become smaller and more powerful, they generate more heat that must be removed to keep them working reliably. Heat removal is especially important for artificial intelligence chips and data centers. Data center energy use is expected to more than double by 2030, consuming up to 4% of the world’s electricity. A large part of that energy is spent on cooling. Improvements are required in current air- and liquid-cooling methods to address future computing needs. This project will develop a new cooling method using thin coatings made from hydrogels, which are soft, jelly-like polymer networks that absorb water. This method will enable highly efficient heat removal through evaporation from the surface. This technology could greatly reduce the energy and equipment costs of cooling high-power electronics, benefiting industries from computing to communications to aerospace. The findings will also advance the basic scientific understanding of phase-change processes in soft materials with potential applications beyond electronics cooling. The project will train graduate and undergraduate students in interdisciplinary research spanning thermal engineering, materials science, and soft matter physics. This project will investigate a strategy for achieving evaporative heat removal exceeding 1000 watts per square centimeter using engineered thin hydrogel coatings. The research will be organized around three objectives. First, the team will study how the elastic properties of hydrogel networks suppress vapor bubble formation that otherwise destabilizes cooling performance. Second, the team will characterize liquid permeability and evaporation rates in hydrogels of varying thickness and morphologies, identifying conditions under which internal flow resistance becomes negligible. Third, the project will integrate optimized thin hydrogel layers with nanoporous membranes to construct and test a prototype evaporator device, aiming to reduce temperature losses while maintaining stable, high-rate evaporation without boiling. Overall, this project will enable a new evaporation cooling regime using thin hydrogel coatings that bypasses the fundamental tradeoffs of conventional porous media, potentially transforming thermal management for high-power electronics, microelectronics, and other energy-intensive technologies. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2536112 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Renkun Chen | Institution: University of California-San Diego, LA JOLLA, CA | Award Amount: $650,000 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2536112 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2536112.html