Recently, a team of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, USA, launched the first stable all solid-state thermal transistor that uses an electric field to control the thermal motion of semiconductor devices.

It is reported that the transistor has high speed and performance, which can open up new fields of computer chip thermal management through atomic level design and molecular engineering. This progress can also further understand how the human body regulates heat.

Researchers have stated that precise control of how heat flows through materials has long been a difficult dream for physicists and engineers, and this new design principle takes a big step in this direction because it manages thermal motion through the switch of an electric field, just like electronic transistors have done for decades.

Electronic transistors are the fundamental building blocks of modern information technology. They were originally developed by Bell Laboratories in the 1940s and have three electrodes - gate, source, and drain. When an electric field is applied through the gate, it regulates how the current (in electronic form) passes through the chip. These semiconductor devices can amplify or switch electrical signals and power.

But with the continuous reduction of transistor size over the years, billions of transistors can be installed on a single chip, resulting in more heat generated by electron motion and affecting chip performance. Traditional radiators passively absorb heat from hot spots, but finding more dynamic controls to actively regulate heat remains a challenge.

The new type of thermal transistor has a field effect (modulating the thermal conductivity of the material by applying an external electric field) and an all solid state (without moving components), which has high performance and is compatible with the manufacturing process of semiconductor integrated circuits.

The team's design combines the field effects of charge dynamics at atomic interfaces, allowing for continuous switching and amplification of heat flux using negligible power, thereby achieving high performance.

The team from the University of California, Los Angeles demonstrated a gate controlled thermal transistor that achieved record high performance, with a switching speed of over 1 megahertz, or 1 million cycles per second. They also provide 1300% thermal conductivity adjustability and reliable performance with over 1 million switching cycles.