If you are reading this blogpost, chances are you are part of the SPARK-e team, a relative or friend, a representative from the European Innovation Council, or perhaps the R&D department of SME. Our reach is small, at least for now. After all, we are just one more project in a sea of interesting projects, collaborations, and scientific research funded by Horizon Europe, the largest research and innovation programme in the world. Our work is important, but it often goes unnoticed.
However, our motivation stems primarily from a desire to find solutions to everyday problems, affecting us all. So, if by some remote chance you are someone with no connection to this project, stay right here, because we’re going to explain everything you need to know about SPARK-e: about a project that aims to make your life just a little bit easier.
Millions of devices, a single problem
Trying to work out how many electronic devices exist in the world is a complex task. We’re talking about very, very large numbers. However, we can get an idea simply by thinking about all the devices we use ourselves in daily life. Our dependence on technology is almost absolute, and despite the constant development and innovation, our latest mobiles, tablets and computers share the same problem as their earliest designs: if you use them for a long time or run complex programmes, they get hot. Really – devices. Always. Get. Hot.
I know, at first sight it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but let me tell you something: it’s the worst thing that can happen to an electronic device. Excess heat not only affects its performance but also shortens its lifespan. If a single mobile phone were to overheat, it would be a nuisance for its owner, but when we extrapolate that problem to the whole of humanity, we’re talking about something very serious. It is this cumulative effect that worries entities such as the European Union. Against a backdrop of climate change and energy shortages, any wasted energy represents a loss of resources that we will never be able to recover.
And that’s where we come in: SPARK-e. You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?
What we want to achieve at SPARK-e
As I was saying, the European Union is concerned about power consumption. That’s why they have invested millions upon millions into funding projects like ours – to give researchers the chance to find solutions that are not only brilliant from a scientific perspective, but also work in the real world as soon as possible. So, that’s what we do: we look for solutions. But usually, there’s different ways to approach a problem, this blogpost explains our unique idea towards tackling heat transfer in electronics. Don’t worry, it’s much simpler than you think.
Temperature affects the volume of objects. It’s not a particularly complex physical phenomenon – you’ve seen it thousands of times when blowing up a birthday balloon, for example: the warm air from your mouth pushes against the balloon’s walls. As the temperature rises, the particles move faster and take up more space, thereby increasing the volume. Conversely, the opposite happens. If the temperature changes significantly, we may even observe a phase change, such as when water boils in a bowl.
What if I told you there are materials capable of absorbing heat and storing it inside themselves, but without increasing their volume?
They are known as solid PCMs (Phase Change Materials), and they are our bet for curbing energy waste and improving the efficiency of electronic devices.
These materials are characterised by their ability to change their atomic structure (the building blocks inside) depending on whether the temperature rises or falls, leading to a physical phase change. As you can probably imagine, this has many advantages and applications, such as storing the excess heat generated by our smart devices
Although there are many PCMs, at SPARK-e we will focus on those that remain in a solid state, as opposed to the more conventional ones that change phase from solid to liquid. There are several reasons why we chose these materials:
- As they remain in a solid state, there is no need to isolate them from the other components of our device as there is no risk of leakage
- The volume changes in these materials are much smaller because, with no transition to a liquid phase, the movement of the particles and the space they occupy changes only minimally between two solid phases
Equally committed and ambitious
At this point, it would be helpful to summarise. At SPARK-e, our goal is to design special materials that can store the heat generated by our electronic devices. This would improve their efficiency and extend their lifespan, helping us to reduce global power consumption.
But isn’t that being done already?
The short answer is yes, but there’s always room for growth.
Our project doesn’t just want to design materials that store excess heat: we want them to be able to use it afterwards to convert that thermal energy into electrical energy, which can then be recycled and reused for another purpose. This is the real challenge, and the ambitious goal that has the potential to change things.
As if that weren’t enough, we have also set out to design materials that do not use critical or scarce raw materials. If we want our technology to be applicable on a global scale, we cannot use elements that are rare, polluting, or extremely expensive.
As I said at the beginning, SPARK-e is just one more project in an ocean of good ideas and brilliant minds committed to the future. Hopefully, in a few years’ time, you’ll read this story again. Hopefully, then, from a digital device that doesn’t get hot.