3 ms·
Magnetic RAM could soon absorb and use waste heat
- jws 15y agoThermal differential can produce electrical power. It isn't clear to me how modulating the thermal resistance across the magnetic cell improves the situation, nor how changing the 1nm thick layer's thermal resistance by a factor of two is significant in the larger scheme of substrates, magnetic layers, and adjacent bypass materials. The headline smells like a good candidate for an XKCD $200 neutrino bet.
- cperciva 15y agoIndeed, whoever wrote that article either doesn't understand the issues involved or just plain isn't thinking coherently. Now, this technology could be useful in some places where you want to control the flow of heat -- in a climate with hot days and cold nights, you might want the walls of a building to be good at conducting heat during the night and good at insulating during the day (or possibly vice versa, if your primary challenge is keeping the building warm enough) -- and the thermoelectric effect could maybe be useful to the extent that having self-powered elements would avoid the cost of running (very small amounts of) power everywhere. But I'm with you on the neutrino bet as far as the application suggested in the article goes.