Anyone who has ever been frustrated by an overheating mobile phone or wondered how devices will withstand the heat generated by artificial intelligence (AI) applications may be excited to learn about a recent discovery that challenges long-standing assumptions about cooling pathways in electronics.
A multi-institution research team working at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at DOE's Argonne National Laboratory, has discovered a metallic material with the highest thermal conductivity measured among metals. Thermal conductivity describes how efficiently a material can carry heat. Materials with high thermal conductivity are essential for removing localized hotspots in electronic devices, where overheating limits performance.
This experiment was the first to be performed on the upgraded 30-ID beamline at the APS, following a comprehensive project to transform the facility into the brightest synchrotron X-ray light source in the world.
The team, led by Yongjie Hu of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), reported that metallic theta-phase tantalum nitride (θ-TaN) conducts heat nearly three times more efficiently than copper or silver, the best conventional heat-conducting metals.
Copper currently accounts for roughly 30 percent of commercial thermal-management materials. Its thermal conductivity is about 400 watts per meter-Kelvin. The newly discovered material, in contrast, has an ultrahigh thermal conductivity of approximately 1,100 watts per meter-Kelvin, setting a new benchmark for metallic materials and redefining what is possible for heat transport in metals.
"At a time when AI technologies advance rapidly, heat-dissipation demands are pushing conventional metals like copper to their performance limits, and the heavy global reliance on copper in chips and AI accelerators is becoming a critical concern," Hu said. "Our research shows that theta-phase tantalum nitride could be a fundamentally new and superior alternative for achieving high thermal conductivity and may help guide the design of next-generation thermal materials."
In metallic materials, heat is carried by both free-moving electrons and atomic vibrations known as phonons. Strong interactions between electrons and phonons have historically limited how efficiently heat can flow in metals. The researchers' theoretical models suggested that this new material, with its unique atomic structure, could transport heat with unusual efficiency.
The research team used the recently upgraded APS to verify the properties of the new material. They performed high-resolution inelastic X-ray scattering and found extremely weak electron-phonon interactions, enabling heat to flow far more efficiently than in conventional metals.
"The enhanced capabilities of the upgraded APS made these precise measurements possible," said Argonne scientist Ahmet Alatas. "Together, experiment and theory provide a microscopic explanation for the record-high thermal conductivity."
Beyond microelectronics and AI hardware, the researchers say the discovery could impact a wide range of technologies increasingly limited by heat, including data centers, aerospace systems and emerging quantum platforms.
The results were reported in Science.