Texas researchers know how to handle heat, boosting cooling by 72%.

Few topics among PC enthusiasts spark as much heated debate – literally and figuratively – as the humble thermal paste. Ask any tech head about the ideal amount or application pattern, and you'll likely get a different answer every time. Now, material scientists may have flipped the script with an industry-changing thermal compound boasting unprecedented cooling potential – sorry gamers, it's designed for data centers, not your overclocked Minecraft machine.

Motherboard, CPU, graphics card, RAM, power supply – every first-time builder checks off the essentials but may forget one of the most important components, turning a shiny new processor into a very expensive miniature furnace.

Everyday thermal paste is a must-have for protecting the "brain" of your computer, ensuring efficient heat transfer between the CPU and its heat sink to keep your $300 to $1,000-plus investment from turning into a smoldering paperweight.

A fairly simple concoction, your average thermal paste is what is known as a colloid, or a liquid with solid particles in suspension, and typically contains tiny grains of aluminum oxide or zinc oxide mixed with silicone – it's really no different than a fancy glue.

Used to fill tiny, microscopic imperfections between the CPU and heat sink, it removes air pockets that could trap heat, allowing for a more even transfer from excess heat into the sink.

For the average user, thermal paste is perfectly effective, keeping temperatures within a safe range, often between 86 and 156 degrees Fahrenheit (30 and 70 degrees Celsius) under normal conditions. However, for those pushing their hardware to its limits – like running machines beyond factory specifications – standard thermal paste may struggle to keep temperatures below the critical thresholds of 176 to 212 degrees Fahrenheit (80 to 100 degrees Celsius), putting performance gains at risk.

In recent years, so-called liquid metal has become the paste of choice for this more high-end type of cooling, something that has grown more prevalent with the deluge of data centers handling the ever-expanding demands of cloud storage and AI workloads.

This liquid metal paste – referred to as a thermal interface material (TIM) is typically an alloy composed of gallium, indium, and tin – elements combined to create a highly conductive and thermally efficient material (often sold under brand names like Galinstan, a portmanteau for the elements it's comprised of Ga-In-Sn).

Fancier liquid metal compounds can be colloidal themselves, with grains of copper to add pizzazz, pushing thermal thresholds even higher.

Amidst this kind of innovation, a team of material scientists and engineers at the University of Texas Cockrell School of Engineering have developed a new compound to rule them all.

Similarly a mixture of gallium-indium-tin, combined with aluminum nitride particles; it wasn't the combination of ingredients that led to success, but rather the process from which it was made – and it was no easy process.

University of Texas Cockrell School of Engineering

A 72% reduction in thermal resistance of the new thermal paste enables data centers to lower cooling energy costs by up to 5% - a breakthrough with far-reaching implications for efficiency and sustainability in tech infrastructure.

The team didn't simply mix the elements together and hope for the best. Instead, they employed a mechanochemical process that applied substantial force to merge the liquid metal into the aluminum nitride particles.

This method pushed the metal into the microscopic crystal lattice of the ceramic, forming a bond far more sophisticated than a simple mixture. At the atomic level, the unoccupied metal orbits in the alloy aligned with the lone electron pairs of nitrogen in the aluminum nitride, creating a highly integrated material.

In simpler terms, the process ensured the ingredients didn't just coexist but actively interacted, resulting in a tightly bound compound optimized for heat transfer. The payoff? A thermal paste that reduces resistance by up to 72% compared to the best liquid metals currently on the market.

"The power consumption of cooling infrastructure for energy-intensive data centres and other large electronic systems is skyrocketing," said Guihua Yu, a professor in the university's mechanical engineering department and the Texas Materials Institute. "That trend isn't dissipating anytime soon, so it's critical to develop new ways, like the material we've created, for efficient and sustainable cooling of devices operating at kilowatt levels and even higher power."

The effectiveness of a cooling system depends on two key factors – the temperature difference between the heat source and the coolant and the resistance along the heat transfer path. Higher resistance forces the coolant to be colder to maintain efficiency, which significantly increases energy consumption.

By slashing thermal resistance, this new compound eases the burden on cooling systems, allowing them to run more efficiently.

For data centers, this isn't just a minor improvement – it's a potential game changer. The researchers estimate their thermal paste could reduce energy use by up to 5%. That may sound like a drop in the bucket but scaled across the tech industry, it could translate to massive savings in both energy and operating costs.

Also factor in the fact that around 40% of a data center's energy expenditure is spent on cooling, and 5% is a significant drop in energy use.

As promising as it sounds, the material isn't ready for commercial production just yet. However, with an estimated material cost as low as 50 cents per gram, this TIM colloid has the potential to be an affordable and transformative solution for data centers worldwide.