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66 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2023 It's like upgrading from an old-fashioned flip phone to the latest smartphone—everything becomes smarter, faster, and more efficient. Final Thoughts e digital health revolution has ushered in a new era of healthcare, bringing with it a plethora of benefits and possibilities. Remote patient monitoring allows for personalized care, wearable health monitors empower indi- viduals to take charge of their well-being, and digital training tools enhance medical educa- tion and patient empowerment. Moreover, integrating digital technologies in clinics and hospitals paves the way for more intelligent and efficient healthcare systems. So, even if you still feel frustrated with the current state- of-the-art health services, stay tuned. e won- ders of digital health present bountiful oppor- tunities. Aer all, when health meets technol- ogy, the result is nothing short of revolution- ary. PCB007 Henry Crandall is the IPC Stu- dent Board Member. He is a graduate of University of Utah and currently pursuing a PhD in electrical engineering as the Advancing Research in College Scientists Graduate Fellow. To read past columns, click here. At Purdue University's College of Engineering, Xiulin Ruan and Amy Marconnet have invented pat- ent-pending, solid-state, continuously tunable ther- mal devices based on compressible graphene foam composites. The devices can dissipate heat, insu- late against cold, and function across a wide range of temperatures. Ruan is a professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering. Marconnet is an associ- ate professor in the School of Mechanical Engineer- ing and a Perry Academic Excellence Scholar. "As batteries and electronic devices get more powerful, managing heat becomes a more crucial issue," Ruan said. "We all know humans have a nar- row range of temperature to live com- fortably, and that is why we wear shirts in the summer to keep cool and coats in the winter to keep warm. Similarly, batter- ies and electronic devices have a narrow temperature range to function appropri- ately as well, and are even more 'picky' than humans." Conventional thermal switches, analo- gous to electrical switches that moderate current flow, tune a battery's heat dissipa- tion pathways only by changing the con- duction between on and off states. Ruan said the Purdue-invented thermal regu- lators improve upon this technology by changing the thickness of the material inside the regulators, which helps batteries continu- ally adjust to different climates and seasons. The commercially available compressible gra- phene foam Ruan and Marconnet use is built from nanoscopic particles of carbon deposited in a spe- cific pattern with small voids of air in between. When it is uncompressed, the foam acts as an insu- lator; air pockets keep the heat in place. When it is compressed, air escapes and heat is conducted throughout. The amount of heat transfer can be pre- cisely dialed in depending on how much the foam is compressed. (Source: Purdue University) Purdue Engineers Create Continuously Tunable Thermal Regulators for Batteries and Electronic Devices