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.
Energy & Green Tech
Mechanical engineers have designed a more effective and energy-efficient technology for cooling computer chips. Published in Cell Reports Physical Science, the researchers used a mathematical algorithm and advanced 3D printing ...
May 7, 2026
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Energy & Green Tech
A thermoelectric generator with a shape that no human designer would likely have imagined has now been created by a computer—and it performs more than eight times better than conventional designs. Rather than relying on intuition ...
Apr 28, 2026
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Electronics & Semiconductors
As devices for wireless sensing systems become smaller and more complex, finding suitable power sources for them is becoming increasingly difficult. However, advances in low-power sensing technology may allow such systems ...
Apr 27, 2026
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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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