On/off switchable interfacial thermal resistance in graphene/fullerene/graphene heterostructures

YX Xue and HS Park and JW Jiang, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HEAT AND MASS TRANSFER, 212, 124222 (2023).

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2023.124222

Switchable thermal devices are attracting significant research interest as a basic thermal management component. In this work, taking graphene/fullerene/graphene sandwiches as an example, we demonstrate that the interfacial thermal resistance can show a switchable, step-like change by varying the number of fullerenes in the sandwich structure. Changing the number of fullerenes causes a structural transition between the graphene layers from adhered to separated, resulting in an enhancement of about a factor of two in the interfacial thermal resistance during this on/off switchable phenomenon, which we analyze using analytic expressions based on the thermal transport theory. We further illustrate that the switch-able phenomenon can also be realized by applying mechanical strain or by varying the temperature of the sandwich structure. This work demonstrates that the sandwich-liked nanoscale heterostructures can exhibit hysteretic changes in heat transport, and thus have promise for potential applications in switch- able thermal devices.(c) 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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