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LEGO® Block Structures as a Sub-Kelvin Thermal Insulator

We report measurements of the thermal conductance of a structure made from commercial Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) modules, known as LEGO® blocks, in the temperature range from 70 mK to 1.8 K. A power law for the sample’s thermal conductivity κ = (8.7 ± 0.3) × 10(−5) T (1.75±0.02) WK(−1) m(...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Chawner, J. M. A., Jones, A. T., Noble, M. T., Pickett, G. R., Tsepelin, V., Zmeev, D. E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6927980/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31873080
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55616-7
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author Chawner, J. M. A.
Jones, A. T.
Noble, M. T.
Pickett, G. R.
Tsepelin, V.
Zmeev, D. E.
author_facet Chawner, J. M. A.
Jones, A. T.
Noble, M. T.
Pickett, G. R.
Tsepelin, V.
Zmeev, D. E.
author_sort Chawner, J. M. A.
collection PubMed
description We report measurements of the thermal conductance of a structure made from commercial Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) modules, known as LEGO® blocks, in the temperature range from 70 mK to 1.8 K. A power law for the sample’s thermal conductivity κ = (8.7 ± 0.3) × 10(−5) T (1.75±0.02) WK(−1) m(−1) was determined. We conclude that this ABS/void compound material provides better thermal isolation than well-known bulk insulator materials in the explored temperature range, whilst maintaining solid support. LEGO blocks represent a cheap and superlative alternative to materials such as Macor or Vespel. In our setup, <400 nW of power can heat an experimental area of 5 cm(2) to over 1 K, without any significant change to the base temperature of the dilution refrigerator. This work suggests that custom-built modular materials with even better thermal performance could be readily and cheaply produced by 3D printing.
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spelling pubmed-69279802019-12-27 LEGO® Block Structures as a Sub-Kelvin Thermal Insulator Chawner, J. M. A. Jones, A. T. Noble, M. T. Pickett, G. R. Tsepelin, V. Zmeev, D. E. Sci Rep Article We report measurements of the thermal conductance of a structure made from commercial Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) modules, known as LEGO® blocks, in the temperature range from 70 mK to 1.8 K. A power law for the sample’s thermal conductivity κ = (8.7 ± 0.3) × 10(−5) T (1.75±0.02) WK(−1) m(−1) was determined. We conclude that this ABS/void compound material provides better thermal isolation than well-known bulk insulator materials in the explored temperature range, whilst maintaining solid support. LEGO blocks represent a cheap and superlative alternative to materials such as Macor or Vespel. In our setup, <400 nW of power can heat an experimental area of 5 cm(2) to over 1 K, without any significant change to the base temperature of the dilution refrigerator. This work suggests that custom-built modular materials with even better thermal performance could be readily and cheaply produced by 3D printing. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-12-23 /pmc/articles/PMC6927980/ /pubmed/31873080 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55616-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Chawner, J. M. A.
Jones, A. T.
Noble, M. T.
Pickett, G. R.
Tsepelin, V.
Zmeev, D. E.
LEGO® Block Structures as a Sub-Kelvin Thermal Insulator
title LEGO® Block Structures as a Sub-Kelvin Thermal Insulator
title_full LEGO® Block Structures as a Sub-Kelvin Thermal Insulator
title_fullStr LEGO® Block Structures as a Sub-Kelvin Thermal Insulator
title_full_unstemmed LEGO® Block Structures as a Sub-Kelvin Thermal Insulator
title_short LEGO® Block Structures as a Sub-Kelvin Thermal Insulator
title_sort lego® block structures as a sub-kelvin thermal insulator
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6927980/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31873080
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55616-7
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