Experimental evidence of the working principle of thermal diodes based on thermal stress and thermal contact conductance – Thermal semiconductors

This article gives an experimental evidence of the working principle of thermal semiconductor (TSC) devices proposed by dos Santos Bernardes (2009) [1]. For that, TSC working principle is introduced and the experimental procedures adopted for thermal conductivity measurements of a prototype are described. The prototype positioned appropriately between hot and cold plates of the test apparatus revealed heat flux asymmetry with reverse positioning, achieving a diodicity of 0.068 ± 0.0025. The disclosure of this behavior supports experimentally the functionality of the TSC mechanism as a thermal diode.