Thermal Switch with Multiple Discrete Levels

As the complexity of control technology increases, a binary switch is far from being able to meet people's needs for the number of control signals. However, few studies have considered how to achieve multiple discrete levels. To solve this problem, we design and demonstrate a 3-state thermal switch that employs a combination of layers with different metalinsulator transition temperatures of W-doped and undoped VO2. These results overcome the limitation that the original binary radiative switch only provides two discrete thermal signals ("ON" and "OFF"). Moreover, we further demonstrate that the introduction of two-dimensional (2D) materials can effectively improve the resolution of discrete thermal signals, that is, makes the difference of radiative heat flux between two adjacent discrete thermal signals more obvious. Finally, the feasibility for performing a greater number of discrete thermal signals is discussed by setting the number of films and the W-doped concentration of each film. These results pave the way for the development of multi-state channel information processing and multiple thermal management at compact thermal circuits.