Xiaoliang Zhang
Key Laboratory of Ocean Energy Utilization and Energy Conservation of Ministry of Education, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, No.2 Linggong Rd. Ganjingzi District, Dalian 116024, China
Ronghui He
Key Laboratory of Ocean Energy Utilization and Energy Conservation of Ministry of Education, School of
Energy and Power Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
Liang Han
Key Laboratory of Ocean Energy Utilization and Energy Conservation of Ministry of Education, School of
Energy and Power Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
Zixiong Rao
Key Laboratory of Ocean Energy Utilization and Energy Conservation of Ministry of Education, School of
Energy and Power Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
Cun Zhang
Department of Engineering Mechanics, Shijiazhuang Tiedao University, Shijiazhuang 050043, China
Kunpeng Yuan
School of Energy and Power Engineering, Key Laboratory of Ocean Energy Utilization and Energy Conservation of Ministry of Education, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, No.2 Linggong Rd. Ganjingzi District, Dalian 116024, China
Chengzhi Hu
Key Laboratory of Ocean Energy Utilization and Energy Conservation of Ministry of Education, School of
Energy and Power Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
Dawei Tang
Key Laboratory of Ocean Energy Utilization and Energy Conservation of Ministry of Education, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
Ming Hu
Institute of Mineral Engineering, Division of Materials Science and Engineering, Faculty of Georesources and Materials Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, 52064 Aachen, Germany; Aachen Institute for Advanced Study in Computational Engineering Science (AICES), RWTH Aachen
University, 52062 Aachen, Germany
Thermal rectification is a physical phenomenon where thermal transport along one direction is much stronger
than that in the opposite direction, which has lots of applications, for example, thermal management in
electronics and buildings, phonon computers, and so on. However, the efficiencies of currently designed thermal
rectifiers are extremely low, largely affecting the applications of thermal rectifiers, which are generally based on conventional mechanisms of thermal rectification, e.g., asymmetric geometry, nonuniform mass distribution, etc.
Researchers from Shanghai University report that the circular and collapsed shapes of carbon nanotubes can be
interchanged reversibly by simply changing the temperature, which is called the domino effect. Based on the
unusual physical phenomenon we designed carbon nanotube-based thermal rectifiers based on the thermal rectification mechanisms of domino effect. We performed a series of molecular dynamics simulations to evaluate the efficiency of the designed thermal rectifiers and do the phonon mode analysis to explore the mechanisms of the thermal rectification.