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Berkeley researchers led by Professor Xiang Zhang discover that heat energy can travel through a complete vacuum

12 Dec 2019

In a surprising new study, University of California, Berkeley, researchers show that heat energy can travel through a complete vacuum thanks to invisible quantum fluctuations. To conduct the challenging experiment, the team engineered extremely thin silicon nitride membranes, which they fabricated in a dust-free clean room, and then used optic and electronic components to precisely control and monitor the temperature of the membranes when they were locked inside a vacuum chamber. (UC Berkeley photo by Violet Carter)

In the experiment, the team showed that heat energy, in the form of molecular vibrations, can flow from a hot membrane to a cold membrane even in a complete vacuum. This is possible because everything in the universe is connected by invisible quantum fluctuations. (UC Berkeley image courtesy of the Zhang lab)

The team used highly sensitive optics to monitor the temperature of the silicon nitride membranes during the experiment. (UC Berkeley photo by Violet Carter)

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In a surprising new study, Berkeley researchers led by HKU President Professor Xiang Zhang when he was professor of mechanical engineering in Berkeley, showed that heat energy can travel through a complete vacuum thanks to invisible quantum fluctuations, a discovery which subverted one of the basic concepts of classical physics. This discovery of a new mechanism of heat transfer could have profound implications for the design of computer chips and opens up unprecedented opportunities for thermal management at the nanoscale, which is important for high-speed computation and data storage. Now, we can engineer the quantum vacuum to extract heat in integrated circuits.

Please click here for the original version of the press release in English.

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