Transition Materials "Data Center Thermal Bottleneck Driving Innovation ..."

Research evidence excerpt

Transition Materials "Data Center Thermal Bottleneck Driving Innovation ..."

Global Research

21 May 2026ab

Transition Materials Equities

Asia PacificData Center Thermal Bottleneck Driving

Innovation in Thermal Materials Global Sustainability

Phineas Glover

Analyst

phineas.glover@ubs.com

Hyperscaler Outages Highlight the Growing Thermal Bottleneck +852-3712 3917

Recent overheating incidents at major cloud data centers underscore how tight thermal Randy Abrams

margins have become. Earlier this month a rapid temperature spike at an AWS facility in Analyst

Virginia triggered a power shutdown and major outage. This week it was reported that randy.abrams@ubs.com

the PJM grid operator has issued an emergency notice to deploy back-up generators at +886-2-8722 7338

data centers due to extreme heat on the East Coast. Advanced AI and cloud servers now Timothy Arcuri

draw such massive power and emit such intense heat that even a brief cooling issue can Analyst

knock critical services offline. Data center operators are responding with stronger timothy.arcuri@ubs.com

cooling, but we are also seeing market adoption of thermally efficient chip materials. +1-415-352 5676

Diana Chang

Improving Thermal Efficiency via "First Cooling" Packaging Materials Analyst

Our prior research highlighted that high-power AI accelerators (700–1200 W) are diana.chang@ubs.com

pushing thermal limits under existing packaging materials. The silicon polymer +886-2-8722 7335

compounds used to protect and interconnect chips (underfills, mold compounds, TIMs Nicolas Gaudois

etc.) have low heat conductivity (~0.5–1 W/mK). As power density has risen, this low Analyst

thermal conductivity has meant rising junction temperatures, forcing cooling upgrades nicolas.gaudois@ubs.com

or performance throttling.