Heat heals, heat destroys, controlling it is a bear, until now.
If this tech scales, the implications goes beyond computation.
In most materials, the way heat is absorbed and the way it is emitted are inseparable. If a surface absorbs heat efficiently from a particular direction or wavelength, it also emits heat the same way. This long established principle, known as reciprocity, has made it difficult for scientists to independently control how thermal energy enters and leaves a material.
If those two processes could be separated, however, engineers could direct heat much more precisely. A material could absorb thermal energy from one direction while releasing it in another, potentially improving thermal management, energy conversion, infrared sensing, and thermal communication technologies.
A Material That Can Control Heat
To overcome this limitation, an international team led by Professor Koichi Okamoto and Dr. Shunsuke Murai of Osaka Metropolitan University's Graduate School of Engineering developed a new type of device using magneto-optical materials. These materials change the way they interact with light when exposed to a magnetic field, making it possible to alter their thermal behavior.
The researchers paired a magneto-optical material with a phase change material known as GST. The resulting device can control the direction in which heat is radiated, switch that behavior on or off, and retain its configuration even after the power has been turned off. In effect, it allows heat to be programmed in a way that resembles how data is stored and controlled inside a computer chip.
Click here for the paper.
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