Heat switch effect in an antiferromagnetic insulator Co3V2O8

We report a heat switch effect in single crystals of an antiferromagnet Co3V2O8, that is, the thermal conductivity (κ) can be changed with magnetic field in an extremely large scale. Due to successive magnetic phase transitions at 12–6 K, the zero-field κ(T) displays a deep minimum at 6.7 K and rather small magnitude at low temperatures. Both the temperature and field dependencies of κ demonstrate that the phonons are strongly scattered at the regime of magnetic phase transitions. Magnetic field can suppress magnetic scattering effect and significantly recover the phonon thermal conductivity. In particular, a 14 T field along the a axis increases the κ at 7.5 K up to 100 times. For H∥c, the magnitude of κ can be suppressed down to ∼8% at some field-induced transition and can be enhanced up to 20 times at 14 T. The present results demonstrate that it is possible to design a kind of heat switch in the family of magnetic materials.