Heat conduction and reversed thermal diode: The interface effect

The important role of interface collisions on the thermal-diode effect, of the two-segment lattices is studied. In the high-average temperature region, it is found that the thermal-diode effect may be significantly weaken and even annihilated. In the low-temperature region, where the thermal diode is inhibited in the collisionless case, an interesting reversed thermal diode is achieved. These behaviors are interpreted in terms of phonon-band mixing induced by interface collisions. The regime where a reversed thermal diode can be observed by resorting to the dependence of the heat current on the average temperature, and a critical temperature exists. The results proposed in this paper reveal that thermal-diode effect can be qualitatively influenced if the interface collisions could not be neglected.