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Updated: Apr 12, 2026

Characterization of Thermal Transport in One-dimensional Solid Materials
Published on: January 26, 2014
Manipulating Steady Heat Conduction by Sensu-shaped Thermal Metamaterials
Tiancheng Han1, Xue Bai2,3,4, Dan Liu2,3,4
1School of Physical Science and Technology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
Abstract:
The ability to design the control of heat flow has innumerable benefits in the design of electronic systems such as thermoelectric energy harvesters, solid-state lighting, and thermal imagers, where the thermal design plays a key role in performance and device reliability. In this work, we employ one identical sensu-unit with facile natural composition to experimentally realize a new class of thermal metamaterials for controlling thermal conduction (e.g., thermal concentrator, focusing/resolving, uniform heating), only resorting to positioning and locating the same unit element of sensu-shape structure. The thermal metamaterial unit and the proper arrangement of multiple identical units are capable of transferring, redistributing and managing thermal energy in a versatile fashion. It is also shown that our sensu-shape unit elements can be used in manipulating dc currents without any change in the layout for the thermal counterpart. These could markedly enhance the capabilities in thermal sensing, thermal imaging, thermal-energy storage, thermal packaging, thermal therapy, and more domains beyond.
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