Inspired by the growing use of non linear discretization techniques for the linear diffusion equation in industrial codes, we construct and analyze various explicit non linear finite volume schemes for the heat equation in dimension one. These schemes are inspired by the Le Potier's trick [C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 348 (2010) 691-695]. They preserve the maximum principle and admit a finite volume formulation. We provide a original functional setting for the analysis of convergence of such methods. In particular we show that the fourth discrete derivative is bounded in quadratic norm. Finally we construct, analyze and test a new explicit non linear maximum preserving scheme with third order convergence: it is optimal on numerical tests.