Modern electronic devices are currently operated at the nanoscale regime, where overheating becomes a problem. Controlling the undesired heat flows in a useful manner is another less explored way of improving its performance. For this, efficient (non-reciprocal) thermal diodes need to be designed [1]. Since Onsager, we know that linear conductors are reciprocal. I will discuss minimal models where themal and thermoelectric currents become non-reciprocal when we allow for nonlinear contributions, in particular when the conductor develops local hotspots or internal potentials [2]. Even further, particular configurations respond with antireciprocal thermoelectric currents which have the same sign irrespectively of the sign of the
applied temperature difference. Simple cases based on resonant-tunneling barriers.
[1] G. Benenti, G. Casati, C. Mejía-Monasterio and M. Peyrard, Springer International
Publishing (Cham, Switzerland, 2016).
[2] J. Balduque, R. Sánchez, arxiv:2497.14167