An Active Pixel-Matrix Electrocaloric Device for Targeted and Differential Thermal Management

More than 55% of electronic failures are caused by damage  from localized overheating. Up to now, there is still no efficient  method for targeted temperature control against localized overheating.  Although some existing thermal management devices handle this issue by  full coverage cooling, it generates a lot of useless energy consumption.  Here, a highly efficient pixel-matrix electrocaloric (EC) cooling  device is reported, which can realize a targeted and differential  thermal management. The modified poly(vinylidene  fluoride-tertrifluoroethylene-chlorofluoroethylene) reaches a large  adiabatic temperature change of 7.8 K and is more suitable for thermal  transfer and electrostatic actuation at high frequencies. All active  pixels in the EC cooling device exhibit a stable temperature span of 4.6  K and a heat flux of 62 mW cm^-2, which is more than twice  that of the one-layer EC device. Each refrigeration pixel can be  independently controlled and effectively cooled down the localized  overheating site(s) in situ. The surface temperature of the simulated  central processing unit decreases by 33.2 K at 120 s after applying this  EC device. Such a compact, embeddable, low cost, and active solid-state  pixel-matrix cooling device has great potential for localized  overheating protection in microelectronics.