Daniel Spacek, Pavel Jirak
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The random rotation between the layers of the crystal sheet blocks the heat from passing through the layers.
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Nationalgeographic.co.id—For scientist at the University of Chicago have discovered a new way to transmit heat at the microscopic level. This finding is important in engineering, being a solution in managing heat in electronic and can improve their abilities. The findings have been published in a prestigious journal Nature recently.
In engineering, transferring heat to where it is desired is a huge challenge. For example, adding it to certain electronic devices to removing it from car engines and refrigerators that experience overheating.
As we know, all activity generates heat, because energy comes out of everything we do. But too much heat can damage the battery and other electronic components. If you can’t get rid of the heat, that’s a problem.
In this study, the researchers stacked ultra-thin layers of crystal sheets on top of each other, but rotated each layer slightly, creating a material with atoms aligned in one direction but not in the other.
The study’s first author, Shi En Kim told UChicago News that within each crystal layer, we still have an ordered lattice of atoms, but if you move to a neighboring layer, you don’t know where the next atom will be relative to the previous layer. Atoms are really falling apart along this direction
“Imagine a semi-finished Rubik’s cube, with all the layers rotated in random directions,” said Kim, who is also a graduate student at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.
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Park et al
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The researchers rotated each layer of material slightly.
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The result is a material that is very good at retaining heat and moving it, even in different directions. Such capabilities are unusual at the microscale, and can have very useful applications in electronics and other technologies.
“The combination of excellent thermal conductivity in one direction and excellent insulation in the other direction simply does not exist in nature,” said study lead author Jiwoong Park, professor of chemistry and molecular engineering at the University of Chicago.
“We hope this can open up an entirely new direction for creating new materials.”
Scientists are constantly looking for materials with unusual properties, as they could unlock entirely new capabilities for devices such as electronics, sensors, medical technology, or solar cells. For example, the MRI machine was made possible by the discovery of a strange material that can conduct electricity perfectly.
Park’s group has been investigating ways to make very thin layers of material, which are only a few atoms thick. Typically, the materials used for devices consist of a highly ordered repeating lattice of atoms, which makes it very easy for electricity (and heat) to move through the material. But the scientists wondered what would happen if they rotated each successive layer a little bit as they stacked them up.
They measured the results and found that microscopic walls made of this material were excellent at preventing heat from transferring between compartments. “The thermal conductivity is very low, as low as air, which is still one of the best insulators we know,” Park said.
According to him, it was a surprising thing, because it is very unusual to find that property in solid solid materials, which tend to be good conductors of heat. But what was really exciting for the scientists was when they measured the material’s ability to transport heat along walls, and it turned out that they could do so very easily.
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Park et al
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A new material that can transfer and block heat.
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That capability could open the door to experimenting with materials that are too heat sensitive for engineers to use in electronics.
Additionally, it can create extreme thermal gradients, where something is very hot on one side and cold on the other. That’s difficult to do, especially on a small scale, so this finding could have many applications in technology.
“If you think about what window panes do for us, being able to keep the outside and inside temperatures separate. You can feel how useful this is,” says Park.
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