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
Climate change and urbanization have intensified the urban heat island (UHI) effect, where urban areas are significantly warmer than rural areas. This has, in turn, increased the frequency of extreme heat events, such as ...
Jun 15, 2026
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Energy & Green Tech
The rise of artificial intelligence is riding on the back of an enormous data center expansion. Data centers are projected to account for anywhere from 9% to 17% of total electricity usage in the U.S. by the end of the decade. ...
Jun 10, 2026
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Energy & Green Tech
As global warming intensifies, window technologies that can automatically regulate indoor light and humidity in response to environmental changes could help reduce building energy consumption and support the development of ...
Jun 10, 2026
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Energy & Green Tech
A research group led by Prof. Sungjune Park from the Department of Chemical Engineering has developed an ultra-stretchable, anti-freezing hydrogel electrolyte using liquid metal particles. The material can stretch up to nine ...
Jun 2, 2026
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Engineering
Space is a vacuum. Heat therefore cannot be transferred to the surroundings by thermal conduction. This poses a problem for any type of space-capable electronics, which can quickly overheat under these conditions. The only ...
Jun 1, 2026
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Engineering
A new study from National Taiwan University reports a single-layer zigzag-type metallic glass film with precisely tunable emissivity for thermal infrared camouflage technology. A glancing-angle deposition method was used ...
May 31, 2026
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Electronics & Semiconductors
In a study published in Nano Energy, researchers from Queen Mary, the University of Warwick, Imperial College London, and Universitas Mercatorum report a highly stable, biodegradable Moisture-Electric Generator (MEG). The ...
May 22, 2026
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Hardware
Researchers have developed a memory technology that can store and retain data using almost no electricity by controlling spin states through temperature changes. The work, led by researchers from POSTECH and Chungnam National ...
May 13, 2026
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Engineering
CIRCE—the Technology Center has coordinated the design and construction of an electric furnace for ceramic frit melting that has successfully completed its first operational tests. This milestone is the result of the joint ...
May 12, 2026
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Engineering
A Carnegie Mellon University research team has developed a pioneering technology that manipulates thermal radiation with the precision of pixels. The work, published in Science Advances, outlines a method for "digitizing ...
May 12, 2026
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