As economies worldwide are growing exponentially, there is increasing pressure on many of the major sectors to keep up with global trends. Within both transportation and computing, there is growing demand for vehicle electrification and high-performance computing, meaning new thermal management technologies are simultaneously seeing developments. Market intelligence firm IDTechEx’s portfolio of Thermal Management Research Reports and Subscriptions provides in-depth insight into thermal management technologies for a number of applications, including electric vehicles and data centers.
Electric driving and minimizing fire risks
As they transport passengers on a daily basis, electric vehicles require thermal management to not only maintain performance and long vehicle life, but to ensure the highest safety regulations are in place. Risks of thermal runaway and EV fires result in the need for efficient and effective thermal management technologies to ensure problems are dealt with quickly and within a contained area. Components within electric vehicles each have their own ideal operating temperatures, with thermal management technologies also needing to reflect the lower overall temperatures than in combustion engine vehicles.
Batteries, motors, and power electronics are the main vehicle components all requiring thermal management, with EV batteries in particular being one of the most widely discussed. Within a battery thermal management system, IDTechEx’s report, “Thermal Management for Electric Vehicles 2026-2036: Materials, Markets, and Technologies”, labels thermal interface materials, fire protection materials, thermal management strategy, and heat pumps and architecture as the four main areas of interest.
IDTechEx identifies pads, gels, and silicones as some of the most popular thermal interface materials in competition, while for fire protection materials, the properties of ceramics, mica, aerogels, and foams are benchmarked. Water-glycol, refrigerants, air, phase change materials, and immersion, are all thermal management strategies that can be deployed to ensure optimal battery cell temperature is maintained either through cooling or heating, with the report providing forecasts for refrigerant use by type across China, Europe, and the US, and predictions for demand spanning the next ten years.
Demand driving new data center cooling innovations
The need for higher processing power is driving data center demand and resulting in a large increase in the requirement for thermal management solutions, to allow for optimum operating temperatures and to minimize the risk of overheating. IDTechEx discusses how the thermal design power (TDP) of GPUs will create more work as far as efficiency and energy costs are concerned, meaning getting the right thermal management technologies are crucial in the overall design of data centers.
IDTechEx’s report, “Thermal Management for Data Centers 2026-2036: Technologies, Markets, and Opportunities”, demonstrates that over the coming decade, the total power of data centers is expected to dramatically increase, with hyperscalers including Microsoft or AWS leading the growth, jumping from around 80GW in 2025, to nearer 270GW by 2035.
The introduction of two-phase direct-to-chip liquid cooling is expected to become more of a common feature soon, in line with efforts to increase efficiency. Liquid cooling in itself can offer benefits that air cooling can’t match, as a result of the higher heat capacity of liquids and resulting quicker effectiveness. Aside from direct-to-chip cooling, which uses cold plates in the place of traditional heat sinks, immersion cooling is another option, where an entire server is immersed in a tank of fluid. However, the uptake of immersion tanks is not expected to be as fast growing due to significantly higher costs and retrofitting issues in existing infrastructures, meaning direct-to-chip cooling is likely to remain a favorable option.
Driven by an increased need for capacity within fast-growing EV and computing sectors, thermal management materials and technologies are an increasingly hot topic. Visit IDTechEx’s additional reports, “Thermal Interface Materials 2026-2036: Technologies, Markets and Forecasts” and “Thermal Management for Advanced Semiconductor Packaging 2026-2036: Technologies, Markets, and Opportunities”, and the wider portfolio of Thermal Management Research Reports and Subscriptions for the latest, in-depth research.
