2020/07/23 by Zhaonan Meng, Meng, Zhaonan, Raza Gulfam +5
Engineering · Materials Science · #Applied Physics (physics.app-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Phase-change materials and chalcogenides #Thermal Radiation and Cooling Technologies #Thermography and Photoacoustic Techniques
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2007.11727
openalex publication_date 2020/07/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Thermal rectification ratios of solid-liquid phase change thermal diodes (SL-PCTDs) are not sustainable beyond a certain temperature bias, necessitating reasonably compatible designs. Manipulating the heat transfer in the forward and reverse directions of the SL-PCTD is of great practical interest to achieve persistent performance. Herein, a SL-PCTD prototype is investigated under the supercooling effect of a phase change material (calcium chloride hexahydrate). In the forward direction, supercooling effect plays a significant role in sustaining natural convection far below the melting temperature (30 C), which leads to robust heat transfer within a temperature bias of 10-40 C. While in the reverse direction, dislodging the supercooling via manual supercooling release (MSR) within a large temperature range of 30-7 C tends to greatly inhibit heat transfer. As a consequence, thermal rectification ratio of 2.95 is achieved, which is competitively sustainable at large temperature bias compared to the SL-PCTD without supercooling effect. To address the effect of supercooling on thermal rectification comprehensively, thermal resistance approach is applied to theoretically model the SL-PCTD, which shows a good agreement with experimental data. Such a device with supercooling control in only one direction is further named as the SL-PCTD with gating functionality, where manipulating supercooling effect of phase change material opens up a feasible avenue for enabling generalized thermal diode.