The design of a thermal rectifier

The idea that one can build a solid-state device that lets heat flow more easily in one way than in the other, forming a heat valve, is counter-intuitive. However, the design of a thermal rectifier can be easily understood from the basic laws of heat conduction. Here we show how it can be done. This analysis exhibits several ideas that could in principle be implemented to design a thermal rectifier, by selecting materials with the proper properties. In order to show the feasibility of the concept, we complete this study by introducing a simple model system that meets the requirements of the design.

• Publication year

  2006

• Venue

  EPL

• Publication date

  2006-08-25

• Fields of study

  Materials Science, Physics, Engineering, Computer Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1209/epl/i2006-10223-5arXiv cond-mat/0608569
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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