Thermal energy management materials encompass engineered solids, fluids, and composites designed to control heat generation, transport, storage, and dissipation in devices, buildings, and wearables. The area integrates thermoelectric and thermomagnetic converters, elastocaloric and solid-state heat pumps, phase-change and thermochromic systems, and radiative or evaporative cooling structures, often with microfluidic or porous architectures. Emerging work couples these materials with machine learning, additive manufacturing, and bioinspired designs to optimize thermal performance, efficiency, and adaptability across scales from electronics to infrastructure.
Engineering
Visitors to this year's Hannover Messe can experience a sudden drop in temperature at first hand—all brought about by simply stretching a metal alloy and then releasing it again. The underlying elastocaloric technology offers ...
Apr 20, 2026
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Engineering
Metamaterials are carefully engineered materials that possess desirable properties and can be used to manipulate electromagnetic, acoustic, or other types of waves in interesting ways. Some materials scientists and engineers ...
Energy & Green Tech
While sustainable solar energy can potentially meet our global power needs, it has one major flaw. When sunlight disappears, solar panels stop generating electricity. The problem is that while they do an excellent job of ...
Energy & Green Tech
A transparent radiative cooling film technology that dissipates heat directly to the outside without consuming electricity has been developed to reduce vehicle overheating during summer. The technology was validated through ...
Apr 17, 2026
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Electronics & Semiconductors
Thermoelectric (TE) materials, which can directly convert heat into electricity and vice versa, are attracting significant attention as key energy technologies for applications such as electronic cooling and waste heat recovery. ...
Apr 8, 2026
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Software
Data centers consume millions of homes' worth of electricity each year, with much of that electricity simply powering the cooling systems that keep the facilities operational. Researchers at Penn State are addressing this ...
Apr 7, 2026
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Energy & Green Tech
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have unveiled a tool to combat climate change, fossil-fuel dependency, skyrocketing home-heating bills, and gentrification all at once—a simple fabric treated with a ...
Apr 1, 2026
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Hardware
The electronics inside your phone, your car, and every satellite currently orbiting Earth share one critical weakness: heat. Push them past about 200 degrees Celsius and they start to fail. For decades, that thermal ceiling ...
Mar 31, 2026
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Engineering
A research team from Taiwan has developed a novel hybrid air-conditioning system integrating shallow geothermal energy and a desiccant wheel. Field tests confirm it significantly reduces energy consumption by up to 34.3% ...
Mar 30, 2026
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Electronics & Semiconductors
Consider the chief difference between living systems and electronics: The first is generally soft and squishy while the latter is hard and rigid. Now, in work that could impact human-machine interfaces, biocompatible devices, ...
Mar 30, 2026
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