Apple working on power-generating heatsinks?

Apple is investigating what may be a revolutionary approach to cooling and powering small computers, according to a report by ITWeek's Green Business News. The computer company is currently in talks with the engineering firm Eneco to use the latter's recently announced Thermal Chip. Its technology is said to convert heat into electricity, bouncing the free electrons of hot metal against cold metal to capture the resulting energy. The chip can alternately be used to cool hardware dramatically by receiving direct electricity and produces as much as five times the energy density of a lithium-ion battery, Eneco claims.

While both companies have yet to settle on a contract and are not expected to ship products in the immediate future, the potential impact for Apple could be dramatic, ITWeek writes. The system builder, which has often struggled with thermal issues in its systems in the past, could effectively solve its cooling difficulties by absorbing most of the heat generated by processors and converting it into a source that would reduce or even eliminate the need for a high-capacity battery in laptops.