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charon [soylentnews.org] writes:

As you stretch gold into a strand one atom thick, an expressway for heat opens up. It's called a quantum of thermal conductance and University of Michigan researchers have observed this phenomenon [umich.edu] for the first time at room temperature.

They report their results in a study published online in the journal Science today.

A quantum of thermal conductance represents the largest possible heat flow through a channel in a material. You can think of the channel as a highway for the flow of heat. The researchers proved that gold atomic chains have such a channel at room temperature.

[...] While this heat flow behavior governed by quantum mechanics has been theorized, it had only been observed at ultra-cold temperatures. However, to create useful nanoscale systems, the effects need to be observed at room temperatures.

Toward this goal, the U-M team developed picowatt-resolution heat flow sensors called "calorimeters" that were able to measure heat flows in single-atom strands of gold and platinum. The picowatt resolution they achieved is 100 times finer than their previous devices, enabling them to observe quantized heat flow properties in gold.

Cui, et. al. Quantized thermal transport in single-atom junctions Science DOI: 10.1126/science.aam6622 [doi.org]

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