Diamond Combined with Liquid Cooling Technology: Forging a New Era of Data Center Thermal Management

In today’s world swept by the tide of the digital economy, data centers have evolved into the "digital heart" that underpins social operation. With the explosive growth of high-performance computing demands such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing, traditional thermal management technologies are approaching their physical limits. When the "thermal barrier" becomes a key bottleneck restricting the development of computing power, a silent revolution in thermal dissipation has begun—the integrated innovation of diamond and liquid cooling technology is reshaping the thermal management landscape of data centers in an unprecedented way.

Traditional air-cooling systems rely on air convection to dissipate heat, and their cooling efficiency is limited by the low heat capacity and thermal conductivity of air. When the chip power density exceeds 100 watts per square centimeter, air cooling becomes increasingly inadequate. This "thermal runaway" not only reduces computing efficiency and shortens equipment lifespan, but also poses a serious threat to the stable operation of data centers.

Liquid cooling technology emerges as the times require. By using liquid media to directly or indirectly contact heat sources, its cooling efficiency is 1,000–3,000 times higher than that of air. Immersion liquid cooling submerges the entire server in non-conductive coolant, achieving nearly 100% heat recovery rate; cold plate liquid cooling, through microchannel design, fits tightly with chips to precisely target high heat flux areas. Natural diamond boasts an ultra-high thermal conductivity of 2200 W/(m·K), which is 5 times that of copper, 10 times that of aluminum, and nearly 4 times higher than aluminum nitride—the most advanced thermal dissipation material available today. Innovative forms such as diamond films and diamond composites not only retain high thermal conductivity, but also exhibit excellent mechanical strength and machinability. Experiments show that depositing a diamond layer only 100 microns thick on the chip surface can reduce hot spot temperatures by 30–50°C. This "near-junction cooling" capability is the key to addressing the thermal challenges of 3D stacked chips.

When diamond meets liquid cooling, thermal dissipation technology achieves a leap from "quantitative change" to "qualitative change". The core of this collaborative innovation lies in building a multi-dimensional heat dissipation path: diamond is responsible for rapidly spreading heat horizontally inside the chip, while the liquid cooling system efficiently removes heat transferred vertically.

In the field of interface materials, diamond composites serve as thermal interface materials (TIMs), which can reduce the contact thermal resistance between chips and cold plates by over 60%. These materials retain diamond’s high thermal conductivity and adapt to surface irregularities through metal phase change, achieving full contact. After using diamond-reinforced TIMs, the temperature difference between the CPU and the cold plate drops from 15°C with traditional thermal grease to less than 5°C. Cold plate design has also ushered in innovation thanks to diamond.

Coating the inner wall of microchannel cold plates with a diamond layer not only enhances corrosion resistance and extends system lifespan, but also its superhydrophobic properties reduce flow resistance by up to 20% and cut pump power consumption. More ingeniously, fabricating micro-nano composite structures on diamond substrates via laser processing can significantly increase the specific surface area, enhance boiling heat transfer, and improve the local heat transfer coefficient by 3–5 times.

For immersion liquid cooling, diamond particles with diameters of 10–100 nanometers form micro-convection in the coolant, breaking the boundary layer and strengthening turbulent mixing. Meanwhile, diamond particles act as nucleation sites, greatly reducing boiling superheat and triggering phase-change heat dissipation at lower temperatures. Studies indicate that adding 0.1% volume fraction of nanodiamonds can increase the boiling heat transfer coefficient of fluorinated liquid by over 40%.

The integration of diamond and liquid cooling is just the starting point of the thermal dissipation revolution. With the cross-disciplinary innovation of materials science, fluid mechanics, and artificial intelligence, the next-generation thermal management systems are moving toward intelligence and adaptability. In an era where computing power has become the core productivity, the in-depth integration of diamond and liquid cooling is not merely a technical solution to "cool down" chips, but also a foundational breakthrough to unlock computing potential and drive the sustainable development of digital civilization.

CSMH uses the MPCVD method to prepare large-sized and high-quality diamonds,and currently has mature products such as diamond heat sinks, diamond wafers, diamond windows,diamond composite materials,etc.Among them,the thermal conductivity of diamond heat sinks is 1000-2200w/（m.k）, which has been applied in aerospace, high-power semiconductor lasers, optical communication, chip heat dissipation, nuclear fusion and other fields.