Characterization of thermal rectification in asymmetrical-structured materials with inhomogeneous mass distribution

Abstract

We study the asymmetrical heat flux present in a one-dimensional, two-segment, nearest-neighbor anharmonic oscillator system subjected to the influence of a temperature gradient for two different mass distributions. For a small system size the largest asymmetry in the heat flux is obtained for the case wherein one segment has larger mass values than the other one, the lowest with the already considered uniform mass distribution, and an intermediate one with a linear mass gradient along the system length. These results are also obtained in the largest system size limit, wherewith it was observed that the heat flux increases as the system size does so for the case of the two segments with dissimilar mass value.