Active and passive cooling

Because of its extremely high thermal conductivity and thermal radiation characteristics, graphene plays a revolutionary and key role in heat dissipation solutions for modern high-power electronic products (such as 5G phones, high-performance laptops, and servers), whether for active or passive cooling.

1. Graphene and "Passive Cooling" (Passive Cooling)

Passive cooling does not rely on additional power (such as fans or pumps), but purely uses the material's own conductive and radiative abilities to carry away heat. This is currently the most widely used and mature area of graphene application.

Graphene thermal film / heat spreader： Widely used in smartphones, tablets, and SSD solid-state drives. Its function is to rapidly and evenly disperse the concentrated high heat from heat sources (such as processors) outward (XY-axis heat conduction), preventing local overheating and throttling of the device.
Graphene thermal coating： Spraying graphene composite coatings onto traditional aluminum extrusions, copper cooling fins, or metal enclosures. By leveraging graphene's excellent "thermal radiation" properties, heat can dissipate into the surrounding air more quickly, effectively improving overall cooling efficiency.
Graphene thermal paste / thermal pad： As a thermal interface material (TIM), it fills microscopic gaps between chips and cooling modules, greatly reducing thermal resistance at contact surfaces.

2. Graphene and "Active Cooling" (Active Cooling)

Active cooling uses external power to force fluids (air or liquid) to remove heat. Graphene acts here as an auxiliary engine to "enhance heat transfer efficiency."

Enhanced water / liquid cooling systems： As discussed earlier, adding graphene to coolant, or coating graphene inside cold plates (Cold Plate) and microchannels, can significantly increase the heat transfer rate between the liquid and metal contact surfaces.
Auxiliary vapor chamber (VC) and heat pipes： In high-end laptops or graphics cards equipped with powerful fans, the fan blows heat away, but in the process of transferring heat from the chip to the fan outlet, combining graphene materials (for example, wrapping the outside of heat pipes with a graphene film) can allow heat to reach the fan area more quickly, maximizing the fan's heat exhaust effectiveness.