University of Illinois at Urbana-champaign professors William King and Eric Pop have taken nanometer-scale temperature measurements of a grapheme based transistor and discovered a new cooling properties of the substance. At the points where the graphene touches metal contacts the thermoelectrical cooling effects outstrip that of the resistive heating, and ends up cooling the graphene transistor.
Thermoelectrical cooling effects, for those who do not know, is similar to the Peltier-Seebeck Effect. A temperature differential is created by applying higher voltage to a component where two different metals are connected at two different junctions in a circuit. See the Wiki here. Heat was absorbed faster by the metal than the graphene could produce, in this case.
A great discovery as graphene shapes up to become a major ingredient of our future electronics. Further studies of graphene, nano-tubes, and other nanomaterial is planned by the team.
Eavesdropper
pic via Alex Jerez, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Showing an atomic force microscope top scanning graphene surface