The key thing to have these high-performance electronic devices
is to keep these things cool. And to keep these things
cool, we really need to have some advanced
thermal solutions. But the key change which has happened in the
last decade or so is additive manufacturing, or
the age of 3D printing. It enables you to come up with innovative
designs. Design something which was previously not thought of.
--We sat down as a team coming up with ideas. One of our
contributing factors was keeping things
natural. So we had a shark fin design.
--We need to introduce structures which can reduce the drag.
And that's how we take inspiration for the shark fins. They basically allow the air to swirl inside.
Because the air spends a longer time inside, it gives it more time to take the heat out.
One of the key inspirations from that part is the human body system.
As our human body system operates, we breathe in air and we breathe out air.
And that's how the respirator kind of originated.
--The point of the swirlers and the respirator, and having those three separate
stages is to optimize
heat transfer at the entrance of the heat sink,
to refresh the air in the middle, and then
to optimize the heat transfer in the latter half of the heat sink.
--As we saw later in the competition, none of the other teams had that design.
Even the judges said this is a very unique and smart thing to do.
Heat sinks of the top six teams were printed
by GE and tested.
--The actual results turned out to be much much better
than what we thought about. Performance wise, we were
much better.  Cost wise, we were much lower.
--I was just like, "Oh, we won!" Because everybody in my department knew that
I was waiting for the news. Pretty exciting!
--Taking nature-inspired structures and
translating them to something that can be manufactured with this process
was difficult in some ways, and
required a lot of rethinking the design and translating that.
It was a very fun process, and it resulted in something that I'm very proud of.
--It feels really nice and empowering to come from Purdue,
to stand on the same platform as them and finally emerge as the winners, I'd say.
--Purdue, having all these different kinds of research here,
you go downstairs and there's a whole other group of people that you can collaborate with,
was something that really allowed us to succeed.
