Thermal Diodes: Giant Thermal Rectification from Polyethylene Nanofiber Thermal Diodes (Small 36/2015)

Thermal rectification has been identified as a key to realizing phononic computing and to resolving the ever‐growing heat dissipation problem in microelectronics. The development of these applications, however, are held hostage by the lack of high‐performance thermal rectifiers. Through theoretical analysis and molecular dynamics simulations, T. Zhang and T. Luo propose a thermal diode making use of the phase‐dependent thermal conductivity of polyethylene nanofibers. On page 4657, this leads to unprecedented thermal rectification factors (as large as 1.20) with only a small temperature bias (<20 °C) needed.