Insulator has lowest recorded thermal conductivity.(MATERIALS)

Advanced Ceramics Report, February, 2007

Researchers in the USA have developed an insulation material with the lowest thermal conductivity ever measured for a fully dense solid. Although no immediate applications exist, the principles involved could lead to improved insulation in a wide variety of applications.

The material was created at the University of Oregon and tested by researchers at three other US institutions.

The scientists used a novel approach to synthesize various thicknesses of tungsten diselenide (WS[e.sub.2]). This effort resulted in a random stacking of tungsten diselenide planes, possibly leading to a localization of lattice vibrations, the researchers say. The resulting synthesized material resulted in thermal conductivity 30 times smaller than that for single-crystal...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.