I don't think this would work for coatings. The dimension and geometry of the material matter a lot and this is evidenced by the fact that they know that VO2 ha

I don't think this would work for coatings. The dimension and geometry of the material matter a lot and this is evidenced by the fact that they know that VO2 has normal behavior in polycrystalline thin-films. The VO2 they studied is single crystal and shaped into a nanobeam, meaning that already by geometry there's a huge shape anisotropy that I'm sure influences the properties. The beam is essentially suspended as well so it's relatively free of strain. Honestly I don't think this is going to leave the lab, you're not gonna find this behavior in bulk, only in nanoscale constructions. Also the title of this submission is wrong, heat does flow, just at a lesser magnitude than expected from the Wiedemann-Franz law.