For electronics engineers who want to make faster chips, heat is a big hurdle. More calculations mean more electrons moving through semiconductor material, which generates more heat.

Too much heat makes a chip unstable. So manufacturers use heat sinks or coolers and fans to keep chips at safe operating temperatures. But what if water or other liquid could be circulated on the silicon itself? That might make for better cooling, and faster chips.

That’s an eventual goal of research by Chunlei Guo and Anatoliy Vorobyev at the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester. Using a short-pulse, high-intensity laser, they have created tiny grooves in silicon that exhibit strong capillary action — they quickly wick water along, even against gravity.

Image Researchers at the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester have tested a strategy for moving water and coolants on silicon chips. Credit... J. Adam Fenster/University of Rochester

The laser technique, described in the journal Optics Express, was originally used on metals, Dr. Guo said. “We realized what we did was dramatically changing the surface properties,” he said. “The metal became very hydrophilic.” They reasoned that they might be able to do the same with silicon, which is normally hydrophobic — water beads up on it.