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Moving Heterointerface with Robustly High Thermal Conductance

Fuwei Yang1,2,3,4,*, Wenjiang Zhou1,5,*, Yelingyi Wang2,3,4,*, Yuxi Wang1,5, Deli Peng6, Quanshui Zheng2,3,4,6,†, and Bai Song1,5,‡

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †Contact author: zhengqs@tsinghua.edu.cn
  • ‡Contact author: songbai@pku.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. X 16, 041005 – Published 5 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/yzn5-723b

Abstract

Heat generation and conduction at moving interfaces are ubiquitous and fundamentally important. However, despite decades of progress on thermal transport across static interfaces, insights into moving interfaces remain rare due to the complex and ever-changing nature of most sliding contacts. Here, we take advantage of structural superlubricity and achieve simultaneous mechanical manipulation and thermal measurement of the heterointerface between gold micromesas and single-crystal graphite. We uncover a robustly high thermal conductance which is orders of magnitude higher than that in conventional moving contacts and remarkably insensitive to arbitrary interfacial rotation and thousands of cycles of sliding. In conjunction with atomistic simulations, we reveal the critical role of full atomic contact associated with the interfacial superlubricity and the stacking-insensitive out-of-plane phonon modes that dominate heat transfer. Altogether, our findings highlight diverse superlubric heterointerfaces as a pristine platform for exploring phonon dynamics in moving systems and managing heat in emerging devices including twistronics and slidetronics.

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Popular Summary

Managing thermal transport across dynamic mechanical contacts remains challenging because moving interfaces suffer from microscale surface roughness and material wear that severely throttle heat transfer. We addressed this limitation by leveraging structural superlubricity—a state of vanishing friction and zero wear—between gold micromesas and single-crystalline graphite.

We discovered an exceptionally high interfacial thermal conductance that surpasses conventional sliding contacts by orders of magnitude and remains stable under arbitrary rotation angles or repeated sliding cycles. Our analysis reveals that this thermal stability originates from full atomic-scale contact and out-of-plane lattice vibrations whose phonon coupling is inherently insensitive to interfacial stacking alignment. Our work establishes superlubric heterointerfaces as a robust platform for thermal management in moving microdevices and provides foundational principles for emerging fields such as twistronics and slidetronics.

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Phys. Rev. X 16, 041005– Published 5 October, 2026
  • Received 29 January 2026
  • Accepted 24 August 2026
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