Abstract
Solitons are self-sustained wave packets that arise in wave systems and maintain their shape during propagation by balancing nonlinear and dispersive effects, exhibiting stability, robustness, and particle-like interactions. However, localized traveling temperature pulses are difficult to sustain in thermal media, as diffusion rapidly broadens and attenuates localized profiles and intrinsic driving and nonlinearity are generally absent. Here, we show that electronic driving offers a pathway to circumvent these limitations through programmable thermoelectric interfaces, enabling precise, dynamic modulation and the construction of reconfigurable coupling networks. Using this approach, we experimentally demonstrate wave-like transport behavior in a thermoelectric metamaterial with electronically controlled couplings. Within a non-Hermitian framework, a pseudo-convection effect propels thermal fields; further incorporating nonlinearity leads to soliton-like thermal pulses that display markedly reduced amplitude decay and relative broadening compared with linear diffusive dynamics. Our observations reveal the synergistic effect of circuit-mediated non-Hermicity and nonlinearity, providing a mechanism for localized energy propagation and information transmission.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the support by Ministry of Education Singapore (Grant No. A-8002978-00-00). C.-W.Q. acknowledges the financial support from National Research Foundation, Singapore (NRF) under NRF’s Medium Sized Center: Singapore Hybrid-Integrated Next-Generation μ-Electronics (SHINE) Center funding program. C.-W.Q. also acknowledges the support from the Research Platform for Energy and Environmental Nanotech, National University of Singapore (Suzhou) Research Institute, and the Science and Technology Project of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BZ2022056). T.L. acknowledges the financial support of National Excellent Youth Science Fund Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52322502), National Nature Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52175009), the National key research and development program (Grant No. 2022YFB4701700), Heilongjiang Providence Nature Science Foundation of China (Grant No. YQ2022E022), Pre-research Task of State Key Laboratory of Robotics and Systems (HIT) and Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities. X.Z. acknowledges the support of Major Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52293372). C.X. acknowledges the support of the PhD Candidate Innovation Fund of State Key Laboratory of Robotics and Systems (Grant No. SKLRS−2025-ZM−09). The authors thank Demetrios N. Christodoulides for the discussions and suggestions for this study.
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J.L. and C.-W.Q. conceived the idea. J.L. performed the theoretical derivation and the numerical simulations. J.L. and C.X. designed and implemented the experiment. C.X. fabricated the experimental platform. J.L., C.X., Z.X., K.L. and T.L. analyzed the data. J.L., S.Y., X.Z., J.H., G.H. and C.-W.Q. made the visualizations. J.L. and C.-W.Q. wrote the manuscript. C.-W.Q. and T.L. supervised the work. All the authors contributed to the discussion and finalization of the manuscript.
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Li, J., Xu, C., Xu, Z. et al. Electronically driven soliton-like thermal pulses. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-72201-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-72201-5
