March 18, 2025 – Washington, D.C. – The Honorable Dr. Chris Wright, U.S. Secretary of Energy, made a visit to the Purdue University-led research team during the 2025 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit. Dr. Wright experienced a live demonstration of the team’s innovative in-package direct-on-chip two-phase cooling technology, that is aimed at addressing the thermal challenges of next-generation high-power AI devices.
The novel cooling approach developed in collaboration with Binghamton University, SEGUENTE, and Honeywell, represents a disruptive opportunity for the data center and semiconductor industries. During his March 19 visit to the Purdue booth (#748), AMD’s Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President, Mark Papermaster, praised this technology and its potential.
“We were honored to host Secretary Wright and share the impactful research we are advancing under the ARPA-E COOLERCHIPS program,” stated Purdue University Professor Tiwei Wei. “Phase-change cooling systems are important for meeting the increasing power needs of high-performance devices. Phase change-based cooling technologies are necessary to dissipate the thermal load generated by current high-power GPUs. In a boiling regime, liquid jet impingement with porous wick structures has a higher cooling rate due to the use of latent heat. The Purdue team achieved an ultra-low thermal resistance of about 0.015 K/W with a superheat of only 10°C, establishing this technology as a potential game changer for energy-efficient data center thermal management. While two-phase operation has significantly better cooling performance, flow instabilities arising from liquid and vapor flows make it less appealing to engineering applications. This technique with novel wick and manifold design effectively mitigates these instabilities by enabling liquid-vapor separation, thereby preventing dry-out under extreme heat flux conditions.
The team acknowledged ARPA-E’s leadership, notably Dr. Peter De Bock and Dr. Jungho Kim, for their ongoing support. The Purdue-led team, which included important collaborators Prof. Justin A. Weibel, Prof. Scott Schiffres, Prof. Srikanth Rangarajan, Prof. Bahgat Sammakia, Dr. Ryan Enright, Dr. Raffaele Luca Amalfi, and Dr. Arad Azizi, emphasized the collaborative effort that enabled this invention.
The exhibition was part of the Summit’s Technology Showcase, which featured more than 300 revolutionary energy solutions from the ARPA-E portfolio. The Summit includes expert panels, fast pitches from ARPA-E Program Directors, and networking opportunities that connect cutting edge science and commercialization.
