Professors Junqiao Wu, along with MSE postdoc Sangwook Lee and student Joonki Suh, and LBNL postdoc Fan Yang, have discovered that the thermal conductivity in the zigzag direction in black phosphorous is two times higher than along its armchair direction at temperatures higher than 100 Kelvin. Black phosphorous has opposite anisotropy in thermal and electrical conductivities - i.e.,  heat flows more easily along a direction in which electricity flows with more difficulty. Such anisotropy would be a boost for designing energy-efficient transistors and thermoelectric devices.The work is published in Nature Communications. More information about the work can be found at:

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2015/10/16/is-black-phosphorous-the-next-big-thing-in-materials/