Heat Can Travel Only One Way Through New Japanese Diode

Japanese researchers create a one-way thermal conductor that
could lead to a new form of information processing.

Japanese researchers have developed a new diode that only
transmits heat currents in one direction, and they think it
could represent a new future for thermal computing.

Similar work has succeeded with individual electrons in
superconductors and in lone nanotubes, according to
Technology Review. But this represents the first time anyone
has managed the trick in a bulk solid, which in this case
consists of two types of perovskite cobalt oxides.

Researchers have long theorized that such diodes, or thermal
rectifiers, could become possible with the right material.
Such a material would have to have high thermal conductivity
at low temperatures and vice versa, so that that heat would
flow continuously in one direction -- and then researchers
could combine the material with another having the opposite
characteristic.

Such a device has clear use in creating heat sinks that keep
microchips running cool. Yet Wataru Kobayashi at Waseda
University and his colleagues have put forth a more ambitious
goal: controlling heat currents to create a new type of
information processing with thermal transistors, thermal
logic gates, and thermal memory.

Technology Review proposes that such computing could harness
waste heat from electronic devices, and supplement electrical
power.