Elimination of thermal rectification effect and the reversed thermal diode

Abstract

We investigate the important role of interface collisions on the thermal conduction behavior, especially on the thermal rectification effect, of the two-segment lattices. In the high-average temperature regime, it is found that the thermal diode effect may be significantly weaken and even eliminated. Meanwhile in the low-temperature regime, an interesting reversed thermal diode is realized. These behaviors are interpreted in terms of phonon bands mixing induced by interface collisions. The results proposed in this paper reveal that thermal diode effect can be qualitatively influenced if the interface collisions could not be neglected.