Under the direction of Dr. Daniel K. Harris this laboratory conducts research in advanced cooling solutions and thermal management strategies for applications ranging from micro-scale electronics up to macro scale systems.

Dr. Harris has ten years of industrial experience in thermal management and cooling of electronics for airborne and spaceborne electronics.

After joining the faculty at Auburn in 1997 Dr. Harris founded AuTherMML. While his industrial experience is in the aerospace industry, over the last seven years he has conducted research at AuTherMML for military and commercial sponsors from the automotive, defense radar, and computer industries along with the Strategic Missile Defense Command (SMDC) in Huntsville, AL.

Recent contributions have centered upon advancing heat pipe technology using micro-fibrous metal felts wicks. Heat pipes are closed passive phase change devices that can achieve very high thermal conductance values. Microfibrous metal felts are a unique and unexplored wicking medium that give heat pipes the ability to be flat, conformal, and bendable.

Both copper and aluminum container heat pipes have been successfully made using R134a as the working fluid for applications ranging between -40 °C and 100 °C. The heat pipes use micro-fibrous copper felts as the wick. These R134a heat pipes are the first such working devices that have been reported in the literature. Sintered copper felt was used as the wick structure in the copper-R134a heat pipe whereas nickel felt was used in the case of aluminum-R134a heat pipe.

Copper water heat pipes have also been successfully made using microfibrous felt wicks and have achieved a conductance of 55 copper equivalents. These microfibrous heat pipes can handle hundreds of Watts of heat load within a quarter-inch diameter pipe and have demonstrated an ability to continue working even after being bent into contorted geometries. Current research includes investigation on bendability of heat pipes using metal felt wick, shape memory alloy (SMA) heat pipes and micro heat pipes etched in silicon.