Piezoelectric fans

Lards · Post by **Lards** » Fri Jan 17, 2003 4:56 pm

Came across an interesting article at New Scientist.

http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/t ... technology

A quote from the article:

When Garimella put a piezoelectric fan inside a laptop computer with a rotational fan, it brought the temperature down by 8°C. The piezoelectric fans are far less power hungry, he says, using about one per cent of the power needed by rotational fans

Sounds promising, adding these fans to existing fans, meaning you could run existing fans slower (if they're not already at 5v).

Also - they don't make any noise!

Although I don't think any such devices are going to be available any time soon.

Red Dawn · Post by **Red Dawn** » Sun Jan 19, 2003 7:28 am

Very interesting. We'll see if it reaches the PC market, or not. From the way the article presents it's 'findings', it looks as though it may take some time to get here.

I find this bit rather interesting:

Piezoelectric fans could be also be used to break up pockets of hot air in tiny spaces that rotational fans cannot reach. Garimella eventually hopes to build fans with 100 micrometre blades that could be attached directly to computer chips.

Will we be seeing piezoelectric fans on all our chips in the future? Who knows...