Nanofluidic ionic thermoelectric energy conversion through the thermal management of electronic devices using composite phase-change material

With the rapid growth of high-performance computing and big-data processing, electronic devices increasingly operate at high frequency and power, imposing stringent thermal management demands. Modern electronic thermal management systems face dual challenges: heat accumulation during continuous operation and pronounced temperature fluctuations under intermittent conditions. Meanwhile, the low-grade waste heat generated during operation is difficult to be efficiently utilized. By leveraging the latent heat buffering of composite phase-change materials and temperature gradient-–driven ionic thermoelectric techniques, this work reports an integrated system combining electronic thermal management with ionic thermoelectric energy conversion. Next, numerical modeling and experimental measurements are conducted for parametric optimization. Under a heat flux of 3000 W m⁻² and a continuous operation time of 120 min, the maximum surface temperature of the electronic device with the proposed system is experimentally maintained at 71.20 °C, compared with 89.67 °C for electronic devices individually coupled with ionic thermoelectric module and 74.23 °C for electronic devices coupled with ionic thermoelectric modules using pure phase-change materials. During intermittent operation with a 15 min on-off cycle, the peak-to-peak temperature fluctuation of electronic devices decreases from 25.23 °C to 17.22 °C by applying composite phase-change material. Furthermore, the ionic thermoelectric module delivers a maximum output power density of 165.98 mW m⁻² in an alkaline electrolyte at a pH value of 11 compared to 93.48 mW m⁻² under neutral conditions at 0.05 M ion concentration. The present work provides an effective strategy for simultaneously enhancing thermal stability and enabling low-grade thermal energy recovery in high-power electronic devices.