Scientists from China have developed a new cooling technology based on a rare-earth alloy that can reach temperatures close to absolute zero without relying on helium-3, reports South China Morning Post. Such an alloy could enable compact, helium-3-free cooling systems for superconducting quantum chips, advanced electronics used by military equipment, and space applications.
The team built a compact, solid-state refrigeration module with no moving parts that reached 106 millikelvin (mK), which is -273°C, a temperature typically achieved using liquid helium. The cooling module relied on a rare-earth compound consisting of europium, cobalt, and aluminum (EuCo₂Al₉, ECA), which features thermal conductivity comparable to metals, but which can also cool itself and other components efficiently using adiabatic demagnetization (ADR), the method that does all the magic behind the discovery.
