Nanofluids for thermal transport

challenges facing many diverse industries, including microelectronics, transportation, solid-state lighting, and manufacturing. Technological developments such as microelectronic devices with smaller (sub-100 nm) features and faster (multi-gigahertz) operating speeds, higher-power engines, and brighter optical devices are driving increased thermal loads, requiring advances in cooling. The conventional method for increasing heat dissipation is to increase the area available for exchanging heat with a heat transfer fluid. However, this approach requires an undesirable increase in the thermal management system’s size. There is therefore an urgent need for new and innovative coolants with improved performance. The novel concept of ‘nanofluids’ – heat transfer fluids containing suspensions of nanoparticles – has been proposed as a means of meeting these challenges1.