A research team has found a method that will allow electronics to cool more efficiently by using a graphene-based film, a finding that could change the way electronics are manufactured.

This film has four times the thermal conductivity capacity as copper, and it can be attached to electronic components that are made of silicon, according to a Science Daily report.

The team, from Chalmers University of Technology, wanted to solved the problem of electronic systems that product a lot of heat due to continuing increasing demands on the performance of these systems.

Graphene was first posited as a solution to the problem by a professor at Chalmers named Johan Liu, who was the first to show its cooling effects on electronics that are based on silicon. This provided a lead for researchers to pursue in trying to find better ways to cool electronics using graphene.

However, there were early problems, Liu said according to the report. Because the graphene film consists of just a few layers of thermal conductive atoms, it can’t get rid of a great deal of heat from electronic devices using the standard methods. And when you add more layers of graphene, there becomes an adhesiveness problem, and it will no longer adhere to the surface.

But scientists have now solved the problem by strengthening the covalent bonds between the graphene film and the surface, and were able to do so by adding (3-Aminopropyl) triethoxysilane (APTES) molecules, which, when heated and put through hydrolysis, creates silane bonds, according to the report.

This allows scientists to double the thermal conductivity of the graphene. A graphene-based film of 20 micrometers in thickness can result in thermal conductivity that is four times that of copper.