Reversible Thermal Conductivity Switching Using Flexible Metal-Organic Frameworks

H Babaei and KR Meihaus and JR Long, CHEMISTRY OF MATERIALS, 35, 6220-6226 (2023).

DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.3c00496

The ability to control thermal transport is criticalfor the designof thermal rectifiers, logic gates, and transistors, although it remainsa challenge to design materials that exhibit large changes in thermalconductivity with switching ratios suitable for practical applications.Here, we propose the use of flexible metal-organic frameworks,which can undergo significant structural changes in response to variousstimuli, to achieve tunable switchable thermal conductivity. In particular,we use molecular dynamics simulations to show that the thermal conductivityof the flexible framework Fe(bdp) (bdp(2-) = 1,4-benzenedipyrazolate)becomes highly anisotropic upon transitioning from the expanded tothe collapsed phase, with the conductivity decreasing by nearly anorder of magnitude along the direction of compression. Our resultsadd to a small but growing number of studies investigating metal-organicframeworks for thermal transport.

Return to Publications page