Investigation on the phase-transition-induced hysteresis in the thermal transport along the c-axis of MoTe2

Abstract

Thermal conductivity: in a loop The thermal conductivity across stacked MoTe2 layers exhibits a hysteresis loop, as the temperature changes. Similar effects in other materials have been exploited for the implementation of thermal memories for the storage of phononic information. Now, a team from Nanjing University in China studies the thermal properties along the perpendicular axis of stacked layers of MoTe2, a 2D material that undergoes a well-known structural phase transition around 250 K. The authors report an abrupt jump in the thermal conductivity around that temperature. The conductivity measured at 255 K during warming is about 10% higher than upon cooling, a hysteretic behavior dominated by phonons. With a performance comparable to other phase-change materials, MoTe2 is a very promising candidate for the implementation of all-phononic thermal memories, working at 255 K with the thermal information being “written/erased” by adjusting the temperature.