Heatsinks work better in electrostatic field.

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For those people that don't like the idea of using a fan on their heatsinks, here's an idea that I came across in the McGraw-Hill "Handbook of Heat Transfer" 3rd edition page 11.52. Apparently an electric field geatly influences the rate of heat transfer between two mediums, i.e. a heatsink and the surrounding air. The idea here is to run a fine wire up and down each of the flutes of your earthed, vertically oriented heatsink and apply to the wire a few KV (via a high impedance for safety) and it improves the heat transfer capability by several hundred percent! Maybe you could put an air ioniser underneath the heatsink instead? It doesn't improve a fan system because any great degree of turbulence upsets things. Disclaimer - I haven't tried it myself.

GP.
 
I once saw a magazine article (was it Popular Science?) for a DIY fan with no moving parts. It had a screen at one end of an insulating cylinder, and a grid of needles at the other end, pointing towards the screen. A high DC voltage (10 kV or so) was applied with the positive to the screen and the negative to the needles. Result was a moderate amount of air movement and usually some ozone generation. A side effect was dust precipitation requiring frequent cleaning.

I suspect the increased cooling capability of the heatsinks is brought about by the charge induced movement of air, not directly by the charge/field. It doesn't take much air movement to dramatically increase a heat sink's efficiency.

It might make for an interesting experiment, but I think fans are much more practical...

MR
 
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