Tunable liquid-solid hybrid thermal metamaterials with a topology transition

Abstract

Thermal metamaterials provide rich control of heat transport which is becoming the foundations of cutting-edge applications ranging from chip cooling to biomedical. However, due to the fundamental laws of physics, the manipulation of heat is much constrained in conventional thermal metamaterials where effective heat conduction with Onsager reciprocity dominates. Here, through the inclusion of thermal convection and breaking the Onsager reciprocity, we unveil a regime in thermal metamaterials and transformation thermotics that goes beyond effective heat conduction. By designing a liquid-solid hybrid thermal metamaterial, we demonstrate a continuous switch from thermal cloaking to thermal concentration in one device with external tuning. Underlying such a switch is a topology transition in the virtual space of the thermotic transformation which is achieved by tuning the liquid flow via external control. These discoveries illustrate the extraordinary heat transport in complex multi-component thermal metamaterials and pave the way toward an unprecedented regime of heat manipulation.

References in corpus (7)

• Transforming heat transfer with thermal metamaterials and devices
• Invisible sensor: Simultaneous sensing and camouflaging in multiphysical fields
• Intelligent thermal cloak-concentrators
• Kelvin Helmholtz instability in an ultrathin air film causes drop splashing on smooth surfaces
• Non-Reciprocal Thermal Material by Spatio-Temporal Modulation
• Transformation thermal convection: Cloaking, concentrating, and camouflage
• Diffusion-Dominated Pinch-Off of Ultralow Surface Tension Fluids

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Controlling mass and energy diffusion with metamaterials
• Topological thermal transport
• Higher-Order Topological In-Bulk Corner State in Pure Diffusion Systems
• On-chip omnidirectional electromagnetic-thermal cloak
• Extended-localized transition in diffusive quasicrystals
• Scattering symmetry of diffusive systems