Startup wants to use lasers to cool chips in a weirdly precise way

Forward-looking: Chips are becoming increasingly powerful and dense, and keeping them cool enough is a growing challenge. We've tried air cooling, liquid cooling, immersion cooling, and just about everything else. But now, a startup has come up with a wild new idea: using lasers to cool down the hottest spots on chips. That startup is Maxwell Labs, which has been collaborating with researchers from Sandia National Labs on a cutting-edge cooling method that precisely targets heat buildups using focused laser light. The idea might sound counterintuitive at first. After all, wouldn't pointing concentrated beams of light at something you want to cool only heat it up more? Well, not in this case, as the technology takes advantage of some quirky materials science. The key lies in the use of specialized, ultrapure gallium arsenide (GaAs) semiconductor plates. When struck by a laser tuned to a specific wavelength, these plates actually get colder instead of hotter. The phenomenon with this ... Read full article.