Observation of nonvolatile magneto-thermal switching in superconductors

Abstract

Applying a magnetic field to a solid changes its thermal-transport properties. Although such magneto-thermal-transport phenomena are usually small effects, giant magneto-thermal resistance has recently been observed in spintronic materials1,2 and superconductors3,4, opening up new possibilities in thermal management technologies. However, the thermal conductivity conventionally changes only when a magnetic field is applied due to the absence of nonvolatility, which limits potential applications of thermal switching devices5,6. Here, we report the observation of nonvolatile thermal switching that changes the thermal conductivity when a magnetic field is applied and retains the value even when the field is turned off. This unconventional magneto-thermal switching, surprisingly, arises in commercial Sn-Pb solders and is realized by phase-separated superconducting states and resultant nonuniform magnetic flux distributions. This result confirms the versatility of the observed phenomenon and aids the development of active solid-state thermal management devices.

33 pages, 5 figures & 9 extended data figures

References in corpus (4)

• Observation of superconducting vortices carrying a temperature-dependent fraction of the flux quantum
• Above-room-temperature giant thermal conductivity switching in spintronic multilayer
• Magneto-thermal-switching properties of superconducting Nb
• Large magneto-thermal-switching ratio in superconducting Pb wires

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Large self-heating by trapped-flux reduction in Sn-Pb solders
• Nonvolatile magneto-thermal switching driven by vortex trapping in commercial In-Sn solder
• Magnon-Driven Magnetothermal Transport in Magnetic Multilayers
• Initial perturbations dependence of non-equilibrium continuous and discontinuous pattern transition