Tunable Thermal Rectification in Silicon Nanowires: A Molecular Dynamics Study

In this work we study thermal rectification in telescopic silicon nanowires with an abrupt variation of diameter by nonequilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) simulations. Furthermore, by calculating phonon spectra, underlying mechanisms is evaluated. We find that by engineering the geometry of the silicon nanowires, it is possible to gain tunable thermal rectification and the rectification value is also sensitive to the alteration of the diameter.