Asymmetrical regulation of thermal transport in BAs/MoSSe van der Waals heterostructures with applied electric field

As a nondestructive regulation method, applying external electric field to regulate thermal transport has become one of the most effective reversible strategies. However, to date, using external electric fields to regulate thermal transport in van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures has been rarely reported, despite the great significance to engineering heat-transfer applications in electronics. Herein, based on the state-of-the-art first-principles calculations, we investigate the external electric field engineered thermal transport in BAs/MoSSe vdW twins heterostructures (i. e. , BAs/MoSSe-I and BAs/MoSSe-II), which are constructed from monolayer BAs and Janus MoSSe. The thermal conductivity of different stacked BAs/MoSSe shows similar response to positive electric field. However, with negative electric field applied, the thermal conductivity of BAs/MoSSe-II is 22. 4 times higher than that of BAs/MoSSe-I under the strength of -0. 20. 16em{0ex}V0. 28em{0ex}^-1. Detailed analysis reveals that the renormalization of phonons driven by the electric field mainly affects the phonon anharmonicity, which is induced by the electric field enhanced or weakened interlayer interaction, finally leading to the different response of the thermal conductivity for the two stacked BAs/MoSSe. The highly effective regulation of thermal transport in vdW heterostructures driven by the external electric fields as shown in this study is valuable for physical and engineering applications in electronics, thermoelectric, and thermal management.