Temperature Gated Thermal Rectifier

TL;DR

This paper reports the first observation of temperature-gated thermal rectification in vanadium dioxide beams, enabling active control of heat flow with potential applications in thermal management and energy conversion.

Contribution

It introduces a novel temperature-gated thermal rectifier device that actively modulates asymmetric heat flow using vanadium dioxide beams.

Findings

Up to 28% thermal rectification in the rectifier state

Thermal rectification significantly suppressed below 4% in the resistor state

Device demonstrates active temperature-controlled heat flow modulation

Abstract

Heat flow control is essential for widespread applications of heating, cooling, energy conversion and utilization. Here we demonstrate the first observation of temperature-gated thermal rectification in vanadium dioxide beams, in which an environment temperature actively modulates asymmetric heat flow. In this three terminal device, there are two switchable states, which can be accessed by global heating: Rectifier state and Resistor state. In the Rectifier state, up to 28% thermal rectification is observed. In the Resistor state, the thermal rectification is significantly suppressed (below 4%). This temperature-gated rectifier can have substantial implications ranging from autonomous thermal management of micro/nanoscale devices to thermal energy conversion and storage.