Deformation insensitive thermal conductance of the designed Si metamaterial

Abstract

The thermal management has been widely focused due to its broad applications. Generally, the deformation can largely tune the thermal transport. The main challenge of flexible electronics/materials is to maintain thermal conductance under large deformation. This work investigates the thermal conductance of a nano-designed Si metamaterial constructed with curved nanobeams by molecular dynamics simulation. Interestingly, it shows that the thermal conductance of the nano-designed Si metamaterial is insensitive under a large deformation (strain ∼ −41%). The new feature comes from the designed curved nanobeams, which exhibit a quasi-zero stiffness. Further calculations show that, when under large deformation, the average stress in nanobeam is ultra-small (<151 MPa), and its phonon density of states are little changed. This work provides valuable insight on the multifunction, such as both stable thermal and mechanical properties, of nano-designed metamaterials.