Researchers at the Japanese National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) and Tohoku University have successfully created the first Peltier element which relies on magnetisation rather than junction current - offering potential for cooling future high-performance processors.
Peltier elements, largely a curiosity of interest only to extreme overclockers working with liquid nitrogen in the larger PC market today, are devices to which a current is applied to create a 'hot side' and a 'cold side'. Heat applied to the cold side is transferred to the hot side at a rate considerably higher than would be the case for a passive material, allowing the excess heat from high-performance processors to be rapidly pulled away and shuffled off to a liquid cooling system. Despite having been first noted more than 200 years ago, however, the Peltier effect has previously only been physically observed in a very specific element which relies upon the application of a charge current to a junction between two distinct electrical conductors.
Researchers at the US National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) and Tohoku University claim to have made a breakthrough, however, with the creation of the first Peltier element which uses the anisotropic magneto-Peltier effect - long theorised but never before physically observed.
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