Today, consumers expect ever more from their devices - smaller size and faster speeds - and that means designers have to worry about heat. Writing in Industrial  &  Engineering Chemistry,  researchers report that liquids containing nanoparticles could help devices stay cool and keep them running.

Rahman Saidur and colleagues point out that consumers demand a lot out of their gadgets. But that puts a huge strain on the tiny parts that whir away inside desktops and mainframe computers, which do the major data crunching for us. The result is overheating. Recent research has shown that substances called nanofluids have the potential to help keep electronics cool. They are made of metallic nanoparticles that have been added to a liquid, such as water.  It puts legacy ferrofluids to shame, as you might expect.

But there are many different kinds, and past research on their coolant abilities has been limited. To help sort through them, Saidur's team set out to determine which ones might work best.

Using a microchannel heat sink to simulate the warm environment of working electronic systems, they analyzed three nanofluids for the traits that are important in an effective coolant. These include how well they transfer heat, how much energy they lose, the friction they cause and their pumping power. All three performed better than water as coolants with the nanofluid mixture of copper oxide and water topping them all.