WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have found a coating for electronics that can dissipate heat from running devices like mammal sweating.

Inspired by mammals' sweating mechanism that regulates body temperature, researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University studied a group of porous materials could absorb moisture from the air and release water vapor when heated.

Their study published on Wednesday in the journal Joule showed that among these materials a type of metal organic frameworks (MOFs) called MIL-101(Cr) can store a large amount of water and thus take away more heat when heated.

They coated three 16-square-centimeter aluminum sheets with the material of different thicknesses, which are 198, 313, and 516 micrometers, respectively. Then, they heated them on a hot plate.

They found that an uncoated sheet reached 60 degree Celsius after 5.2 minutes while the thinnest coating doubled the time and didn't reach the same temperature until 11.7 minutes. The sheet with the thickest coating reached 60 degree Celsius after 19.35 minutes of heating, according to the study.

In addition to effective cooling, the coating can quickly recover by absorbing moisture again once the heat source is removed, just like how mammals rehydrate and ready to sweat again.

"This method is really suitable for devices that aren't running all the time, like phones, charging batteries and telecommunications base stations, which can get overloaded sometimes," said the paper's senior author Wang Ruzhu with Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Wang's team also tested a coated heat sink on a microcomputing device. Compared to an uncoated heat sink, the coated one reduced the chip temperature by up to 7 degree Celsius when the device was run at heavy workloads for 15 minutes.

Wang said the current challenge for MOF's practical application is its cost. He called for more research on the material to bring down the cost in the future.