Washington, Apr 14 : Although laptops are getting smaller and easier to use day by day, they still get overheated causing circuits to melt and the hardware to fail. But, such problems may soon be history.

Thanks to Slava Rotkin, an assistant professor of physics, whose research team have developed a new cooling method for laptops that dissipates heat by overcoming low rate of thermal coupling between carbon nanotubes and substrate.

The method cools carbon nanotube electronics by utilizing non-conventional radiation in a "near-field zone" just above the substrate, or surface, on which the nanotubes rest.

The researchers at IBM''s T. J. Watson Research Center and at the Ioffe Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, have claimed that the new cooling method requires that the nanotubes'' substrate be composed of a polar material such as silicon-dioxide (SiO2).

The technique works by channelling excess heat from the nanotubes into the substrate which, being much larger, can be more effectively cooled by the vents that push cool air through laptops.

Rotkin said: "Other methods of heat dissipation do not succeed at discharging heat from within the channel of the nanotube or nanowire. Our method enables the heat to leave the channel and move to the substrate, while also scattering the hot electrons. This constitutes a novel cooling mechanism without any moving parts or cooling agents."

The results of the study have been published in March in Nano Letters, one of the premier international journals in the field of nanotechnology. (ANI)