An electrochemical thermal transistor

Aditya Sood; Feng Xiong; Shunda Chen; Haotian Wang; Daniele Selli; Jinsong Zhang; Connor J McClellan; Jie Sun; Davide Donadio; Yi Cui; Eric Pop; Kenneth E Goodson

doi:10.1038/s41467-018-06760-7

An electrochemical thermal transistor

Nat Commun. 2018 Oct 30;9(1):4510. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-06760-7.

Authors

Aditya Sood^{1

2}, Feng Xiong^{1

3

4}, Shunda Chen⁵, Haotian Wang^{1

6}, Daniele Selli^{7

8}, Jinsong Zhang¹, Connor J McClellan³, Jie Sun^{1

9}, Davide Donadio^{5

10}, Yi Cui^{11

12}, Eric Pop^{13

14

15}, Kenneth E Goodson^{16

17}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA.
³ Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA.
⁴ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, 15261, USA.
⁵ Department of Chemistry, University of California, Davis, CA, 95616, USA.
⁶ Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, 77005, USA.
⁷ Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Ackermannweg 10, D-55128, Mainz, Germany.
⁸ Dipartimento di Scienza dei Materiali, Universita di Milano-Bicocca, 20125, Milano, Italy.
⁹ School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Tianjin University, 300350, Tianjin, China.
¹⁰ Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, E-48011, Bilbao, Spain.
¹¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA. yicui@stanford.edu.
¹² Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Science, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, 94025, USA. yicui@stanford.edu.
¹³ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA. epop@stanford.edu.
¹⁴ Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA. epop@stanford.edu.
¹⁵ Precourt Institute for Energy, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA. epop@stanford.edu.
¹⁶ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA. goodson@stanford.edu.
¹⁷ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA. goodson@stanford.edu.

Abstract

The ability to actively regulate heat flow at the nanoscale could be a game changer for applications in thermal management and energy harvesting. Such a breakthrough could also enable the control of heat flow using thermal circuits, in a manner analogous to electronic circuits. Here we demonstrate switchable thermal transistors with an order of magnitude thermal on/off ratio, based on reversible electrochemical lithium intercalation in MoS₂ thin films. We use spatially-resolved time-domain thermoreflectance to map the lithium ion distribution during device operation, and atomic force microscopy to show that the lithiated state correlates with increased thickness and surface roughness. First principles calculations reveal that the thermal conductance modulation is due to phonon scattering by lithium rattler modes, c-axis strain, and stacking disorder. This study lays the foundation for electrochemically-driven nanoscale thermal regulators, and establishes thermal metrology as a useful probe of spatio-temporal intercalant dynamics in nanomaterials.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

Abstract

Publication types

Grants and funding