By Peter Weiss
Technologists cramming more and more transistors onto microchips face a common problem: too much heat. To make computers chill, manufacturers typically outfit hot chips with heat sinks, whose fins release heat into a stream of air.
Now, a team of university and industrial engineers has created a prototype, microscale air pump that they say could be fabricated with the techniques used to mass-produce microelectronic components such as transistors. The pump would generate cooling breezes right where the heat is being created.