High-Performance Solid-State Thermal Diode Consisting of Ag2(S,Se,Te)

• Published in: Journal of electronic materials Vol. 49; no. 5; pp. 2895 - 2901
• Main Authors: Hirata, Keisuke, Matsunaga, Takuya, Singh, Saurabh, Matsunami, Masaharu, Takeuchi, Tsunehiro
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01-05-2020; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Characterization and Evaluation of Materials; Chemistry and Materials Science; Diodes; Electronics and Microelectronics; Heat conductivity; Heat transfer; Heat transmission; Instrumentation; International Conference on Thermoelectrics 2019; Management systems; Materials Science; Optical and Electronic Materials; Performance evaluation; Phase transitions; Solid state; Solid State Physics; Tellurium; Temperature dependence; Thermal conductivity; Thermal energy; Topical Collection: International Conference on Thermoelectrics 2019; Transition temperature; phase transition; silver chalcogenides; thermal conductivity; Thermal diode
• ISSN: 0361-5235; 1543-186X
• DOI: 10.1007/s11664-020-07964-8

Thermal diodes, in which the magnitude of the heat flow |
J
| changes with its direction, are a key technology for constructing heat management systems. Composite thermal diodes are composed of two materials possessing opposite temperature dependence of thermal conductivity. Silver chalcogenides Ag
2
(S,Se,Te) were employed in this work because of their drastic change in thermal conductivity, with a phase transition in the temperature range of 300 K < 
T
 < 450 K. A jump of 200% to 500% in their thermal conductivity is observed at the phase-transition temperature, most likely due to the change in electron thermal conductivity. A thermal diode consisting of Ag
2
S
0.6
Se
0.4
and Ag
2
S
0.1
Te
0.9
, both of which were selected by considering the measured thermal conductivity, has been prepared, and its performance evaluated. The developed thermal diode was confirmed to possess a thermal rectification ratio (TRR) = |
J
large
|/|
J
small
| = 2.7 ± 0.1 when installed between two heat reservoirs kept at
T
H
 = 413 K and
T
L
 = 300 K. Notably, this TRR is the highest ever reported for a solid-state thermal diode.