Thermal rectification in multilayer phase change material structures for energy storage applications

Thermal rectification in multilayer phase change material structures for energy storage applications

Blog Article

Summary: Solid-state thermal control devices that present an asymmetric Ball - Bag - Personal heat flow depending on thermal bias directionality, referred to as thermal diodes, have recently received increased attention for energy management.The use of materials that can change phase is a common approach to design thermal diodes, but typical sizes, moderate rectification ratios, and narrow thermal tunability limit their potential applications.In this work, we propose a multilayer thermal diode made of a combination of phase change and invariant materials.

This device presents state-of-the-art thermal rectification ratios ALMOND up to 136% for a temperature range between 300 K and 500 K.Importantly, this design allows to switch between distinct rectification states that can be modulated with temperature, achieving an additional degree of thermal control compared with single-rectification-state devices.We analyze the relevance of our thermal diodes for retaining heat more efficiently in thermal storage elements.