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Rice researchers change graphene to help channel heat away from electronics.
A few nanoscale adjustments may be all that is required to make graphene-nanotube junctions excel at transferring heat, according to Rice University scientists.
The Rice lab of theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson found that putting a cone-like "chimney" between the graphene and nanotube all but eliminates a barrier that blocks heat from escaping.
Heat is transferred through phonons, quasiparticle waves that also transmit sound. The Rice theory offers a strategy to channel damaging heat away from next-generation nano-electronics.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday January 16 2017, @11:59PM
Mmmm... yes and no for convection. Yes, it's a macro sorta equivalent of a thermal diode. No, it's not quite an equivalent - it doesn't work in an upside down direction or in the absence of gravitation/gasses (pretty much like buoyancy doesn't work in free-fall)
On the other side, the nanochimney does not rely on a convective medium but on the difference of the speed of phonons (mechanical movements of the atoms) in the two directions. To my mind it means that if a nano-chimney is placed into a homogenous medium, the "anode" end will be, even so slightly, cooler then the "cathode" end (with phonons preferable moving from the anode to the cathode). Smells sort of a passive Maxwell demon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford