EU grants €3m to heat management project
The European Commission is set to fully fund a heat management material structure project with funding worth €3.2m.
The ‘All-scale predictive design of heat management material structures with applications in power electronics’, or ALMA, project is receiving funding from Horizon 2020. The Research and Innovation Action venture aims to enable the multiscale predictive design of heat management materials and structures with applications in power devices, nanoelectronics, random-access memories, high-temperature turbines, and thermoelectric energy conversion.
Speaking about the venture, project co-ordinator Dr Natalio Mingo of CEA in France, which is co-ordinating the venture, said: “Heat management poses a great challenge to the development of advanced technologies. Predicting heat flow in complex material structures is inherently a multi-scalar problem requiring a simultaneous description at the electronic, atomistic, and mesoscopic levels and across timescales spanning more than eight orders of magnitude.
“Current approaches link several models, but no existing approach addresses all these scales simultaneously for thermal transport. ALMA aims to deliver a new design tool at the end of the project and suited to an industrial setting for the design of next-generation power electronics substrates.”
Adding his thoughts, project partner Salvatore Rinaudo, CAD and design services director of Italy’s STMicroelectronics, said: “Having early and preferred access to the most innovative modelling solutions that enable the predictive design of heat management materials and structures is a strategic priority for the company to compete in the power-electronics market.”
Meanwhile, David L Dutton, CEO of project partner Silvaco Europe, based in the UK, said: “We are excited to work with our consortium partners to solve one of the industry’s fundamental problems of heat management in modern electronics.
“Supporting fundamental research that can deliver the next generation of power-electronics substrates is very well aligned with our strategic initiative of continuous innovation through collaboration with customers, partners and industry consortia to address and solve advanced technology challenges.”
The three-year project runs until 2018 and also includes academic and private partners from Austria and Germany. The project is funded under the Industrial Leadership pillar.
