Progressive Cooling Solutions is taking a Russian technology for keeping satellite electronics cool and bringing it down to earth to cool LEDs.

The US-based company has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from Siemens Technology-to-Business to mesh two technologies – micro loop heat pipes developed by Russian scientists, and a "silicon wick”, which is a silicon membrane with pores about 5 microns wide and 500 microns deep, developed by company founder and CTO Ahmed Shuja while at the University of Cincinnati.

The idea is to transfer a device's heat to a liquid, turning it to vapor, then carry it in a tiny pipe up to a couple of meters away to a condenser that turns it back to liquid, CEO Tom Griffin said. The process would usually require a pump, but the "silicon wick" that Shuja has made passively powers the process through capillary action, he said. In short, it's a no-power heat-transfer device.

Progressive Cooling has developed prototypes with $1.5 million in seed funding, primarily from Siemens Technology-to-Business Center, the German industrial conglomerate's seed funding incubator.

Now the company is seeking a $3.5 million Series A round for pilot production of systems aimed at the light-emitting diode (LED) market, where dealing with heat is a major concern.

Heat is a major limitation for making LED lights smaller and more compact. And several startups are seeking to develop better ways to cool LEDs, including Nuventix, which has raised $32.5 million so far to commercialize its system of cooling via jets of air (see Green Light post).

Alessandro Zago, director of venture technology for Siemens TBD and a Progressive Cooling board member, says his company's technology can outperform such active cooling systems. As an example, he said it could allow a 20,000-lumens LED light that now sits in a two foot-by-two foot structure to be shrunk down to a four-inch-square size.

Griffin said that's a key goal of LED manufacturers that want to be able to pack as much light into as small an area as possible.

Progressive Cooling is targeting LED lights for industrial, commercial and outdoor uses, he said. And the company is also eyeing other markets for its technology, including cooling servers and solar panel microinverters.