Scientists at the University of Texas Austin Cockrell School of Engineering say they have developed a thermal material that far outperforms typical commercial products. In fact, like Tom’s Hardware Remarksthe material outperformed commercial cooling materials by 56 to 72 percent in a recent test. The Cockrell team believes it can significantly reduce data center energy consumption with the cooling material, also known as thermal interface material, or TIM.

“The power consumption of cooling infrastructure in energy-intensive data centers and other large electronic systems is skyrocketing,” said Guihua Yu, a professor in Cockrell’s Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering. “This trend is not going to dissipate anytime soon, so it is essential to develop new methods, like the material we created, for efficient and sustainable cooling of devices operating at kilowatt levels and even higher power .”

TIMs typically sit between a processor and the heatsink to help carry heat away from the chip. Thanks to mechanochemistry, the research team mixed a liquid metal known as Galinstan (an alloy of gallium, indium and tin) with aluminum nitride, a ceramic. “(Mechanochemistry) helps liquid metal and aluminum nitride mix in a very controlled manner to create gradient interfaces, making it easier to move heat through them,” the Cockrell School of Engineering said in a press release.

As the Cockrell School of Engineering team points out, the growing popularity of AI is likely to create even more demand for data centers. Given the financial and energy costs associated with operating data centers (and transformer turnover as they reach the end of their lifespan), the market for a new high-performance TIM could be large.

Although data centers are the primary target for this type of TIM, the new dough’s path to your home computer may be shorter than you think. The team compared the TIM’s cooling results with other cooling TIMs, including Paste from Thermalright and Thermal Grizzly. If this new TIM takes off, for all we know it could be coming to Amazon or Newegg near you.

Speaking about commercializing the new TIM, the Cockrell School of Engineering team said they are taking the next step now that they have tested its performance on laboratory devices. They are preparing samples for testing with data center partners who we can only imagine are happy to test the material.