You could switch the thermal sink between multiple radiators to give each one a lower duty cycle.
If you have a radiator at 80C, and a 2nd radiator at 60C and both are connected to HotPlate-X, the heat will naturally find itself going to the 60C, while the 80C will more naturally find its own heat radiating out to the environment quicker.
You don't need a thermal-semiconductor to just have heat flow around. That's just... heat physics.
--------
There seems to be some practical applications for this new "thermal semiconductor". Though the next questions are that of cost, performance, etc. etc.
If I have 4 cores, and 1 is going flat out, I could see insulating the unused (or lesser used) cores. The idea being give the hot part the full cooling capacity.
That seems like the obvious idea. But maybe I'm misunderstanding or forgetting something fundamental.
Isn't it also to prevent the hot part from heating the other, cooler parts? This could be used to give each part of a CPU its own independent cooling. That'd be pretty cool.