Active heat flow control is essential
for broad applications of
heating, cooling, and energy conversion. Like electronic devices developed
for the control of electric power, it is very desirable to develop
advanced all-thermal solid-state devices that actively control heat
flow without consuming other forms of energy. Here we demonstrate
temperature-gated thermal rectification using vanadium dioxide beams
in which the environmental temperature actively modulates asymmetric
heat flow. In this three terminal device, there are two switchable
states, which can be regulated by global heating. In the “Rectifier”
state, we observe up to 28% thermal rectification. In the “Resistor”
state, the thermal rectification is significantly suppressed (<1%).
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of solid-state
active-thermal devices with a large rectification in the Rectifier
state. This temperature-gated rectifier can have substantial implications
ranging from autonomous thermal management of heating and cooling
systems to efficient thermal energy conversion and storage.