Voltage Tunability of Thermal Conductivity in Ferroelectric Materials
AssigneeSandia Corporation
InventorsJon Ihlefeld, Patrick Edward Hopkins
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method to control thermal energy transport uses mobile coherent interfaces in nanoscale ferroelectric films to scatter phonons. The thermal conductivity can be actively tuned, simply by applying an electrical potential across the ferroelectric material and thereby altering the density of these coherent boundaries to directly impact thermal transport at room temperature and above. The invention eliminates the necessity of using moving components or poor efficiency methods to control heat transfer, enabling a means of thermal energy control at the micro- and nano-scales.
Claims26
A method to control thermal conductivity in a ferroelectric material, comprising:
- growing an epitaxial or polycrystalline film of ferroelectric material on a substrate;
- and
- applying a sufficient electric field across the film to modify the domain structure in the film, thereby altering the thermal conductivity of the film.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.