The Chip Fan: Active, Chip-Scale Thermal Management for Demanding Electronics

Chip Fan exhibited at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, USA.

Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
Dates: January 6–9, 2026
Location: Las Vegas, USA
Booth Number: North Hall 10529

As electronic components, especially AI processors, push the boundaries of power density and performance, effective thermal management becomes a critical bottleneck in system design. The chip fan emerges as an innovative solution, utilizing chip-level packaging to deliver robust, localized, and active cooling precisely where it is needed most.

Advanced Packaging for Seamless Integration
Unlike traditional bulky cooling assemblies, this fan is a true surface-mount component. Its second-generation piezoelectric actuator supports standard SMT reflow soldering, enabling it to be directly mounted onto PCBs alongside the chips it cools. This eliminates mechanical assembly steps, simplifies supply chains, and allows for ultra-compact system designs with a single unit footprint as small as 13 x 13 x 2.4 mm.

Targeted Cooling for High-Power Applications
The solution provides targeted cooling for high-power chips, such as CPUs, GPUs, and AI accelerators. By directing airflow at specific hotspots, it efficiently removes heat, thereby increasing thermal headroom. This allows system designers to either sustain higher computational performance or reduce the size of passive heatsinks, enabling sleeker, more compact product form factors.

Scalable Performance for Evolving Demands
Designed with flexibility in mind, the chip fan is inherently array-ready. Designers can scale from a single fan to multi-fan arrays to address larger or multiple hotspots, providing a modular path to meet escalating thermal loads. Its high efficiency is demonstrated by delivering a meaningful 0.18 CFM airflow at a low power consumption of 200 mW per single unit, making it suitable for power-constrained environments.

Supporting the AI Computing Era
This capability directly supports the growing demands of AI computing, where concentrated heat generation threatens stability and throttles performance. By integrating active cooling at the chip level, it paves the way for more powerful, reliable, and densely packed computing platforms.

Conclusion
The chip fan represents a paradigm shift in thermal management, moving from board-level or system-level cooling to precise, chip-scale active intervention. Its combination of miniaturization, integration ease, efficient operation, and scalability makes it an indispensable enabler for the next generation of high-performance, compact electronics.