Graded polycrystalline graphene as Thermal Diodes

I used centroidal Voronoi Tessellation algorithm to create realistic polycrystalline graphene lattice with arbitrary semi-stochastic grain size distribution, and carried out non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations and phonon energy mapping to reveal a practical strategy that can significantly manipulate the directional heat flow in asymmetric polycrystalline graphene sheets. This study showed for the first time that structural modifications in the sheets (2D materials) could increase thermal rectification by many folds, thus paving the way to more efficient and advanced #thermoelectric energy harvesting technologies.