U.S. DOE Secretary Dr. Chris Wright Visits Purdue-Led Team at 2025 ARPA-E Energy Summit
April 10, 2025
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The Honorable Chris Wright, U.S. Secretary of Energy, visited the Purdue University-led research team during the 2025 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit last month. Wright experienced a live demonstration of the team’s innovative in-package direct-on-chip two-phase cooling technology aimed at addressing the thermal challenges of next-generation high-power AI devices.
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. The technique pioneered by the Purdue team mitigates instabilities created by current techniques. 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.
“We were honored to host Secretary Wright and share the impactful research we are advancing under the ARPA-E COOLERCHIPS program,” said Tiwei Wei, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and the principal investigator of the Semiconductor Packaging Laboratory at Purdue at Purdue. Wei and team are working to develop cooling systems for high-performance microchips, making data centers more efficient and saving energy that will help mitigate climate change. This work is supported by a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Members of the COOLERCHIPS stand in front of their booth at the 2025 ARPA-E Energy Summit. The team, which is led by Purdue University, includes members from Binghamton University, and SEGUENTE, among others.The exhibit was part of the Summit’s Technology Showcase, which featured more than 300 revolutionary energy solutions from the ARPA-E portfolio.
