The thermal conductivities of two groups of silicon nanoribbons of ∼20 and ∼30 nm thickness and various widths have been measured and analyzed through combining the Callaway model and the Fuchs-Sondheimer (FS) reduction function. The results show that while the data for the ∼30 nm thick ribbons can be well-explained by the classical size effect, the measured thermal conductivities for the ∼20 nm thick ribbons deviate from the prediction remarkably, and size effects beyond phonon-boundary scattering must be considered. The measurements of the Young's modulus of the thin nanoribbons yield significantly lower values than the corresponding bulk value, which could lead to a reduced phonon group velocity and subsequently thermal conductivity. This study helps to build a regime map for thermal conductivity versus nanostructures' surface-area-to-volume ratio that clearly delineates two regions where size effects beyond the Casimir limit are important or not important.
Van der Waals (vdW) crystals with covalently bonded building blocks assembled together through vdW interactions have attracted tremendous attention recently because of their interesting properties and promising applications. Compared to the explosive research on two-dimensional (2D) vdW materials, quasi-one-dimensional (quasi-1D) vdW crystals have received considerably less attention, while they also present rich physics and engineering implications. Here we report on the thermal conductivity of exfoliated quasi-1D TaPdSe vdW nanowires. Interestingly, even though the interatomic interactions along each molecular chain are much stronger than the interchain vdW interactions, the measured thermal conductivity still demonstrates a clear dependence on the cross-sectional size up to >110 nm. The results also reveal that partial ballistic phonon transport can persist over 13 μm at room temperature along the molecular chain direction, the longest experimentally observed ballistic transport distance with observable effects on thermal conductivity so far. First-principles calculations suggest that the ultralong ballistic phonon transport arises from the highly focused longitudinal phonons propagating along the molecular chains. These data help to understand phonon transport through quasi-1D vdW crystals, facilitating various applications of this class of materials.
The last two decades have seen tremendous progress in quantitative understanding of several major phonon scattering mechanisms (phonon-phonon, phonon-boundary, phonon-defects), as they are the determinant factors in lattice thermal transport, which is critical for the proper functioning of various electronic and energy conversion devices. However, the roles of another major scattering mechanism, electron-phonon (e-ph) interactions, remain elusive. This is largely due to the lack of solid experimental evidence for the effects of e-ph scattering in the lattice thermal conductivity for the material systems studied thus far. Here we show distinct signatures in the lattice thermal conductivity observed below the charge density wave transition temperatures in NbSe3 nanowires, which cannot be recaptured without considering e-ph scattering. Our findings can serve as the cornerstone for quantitative understanding of the e-ph scattering effects on lattice thermal transport in many technologically important materials.
Thermal transport in amorphous silicon dioxide (a-SiO) is traditionally treated as random walks of vibrations owing to its greatly disordered structure, which results in a mean free path (MFP) approximately the same as the interatomic distance. However, this picture has been debated constantly and in view of the ubiquitous existence of thin a-SiO layers in nanoelectronic devices, it is imperative to better understand this issue for precise thermal management of electronic devices. Different from the commonly used cross-plane measurement approaches, here we report on a study that explores the in-plane thermal conductivity of double silicon nanoribbons with a layer of a-SiO sandwiched in-between. Through comparing the thermal conductivity of the double ribbon samples with that of corresponding single ribbons, we show that thermal phonons can ballistically penetrate through a-SiO of up to 5 nm thick even at room temperature. Comprehensive examination of double ribbon samples with various oxide layer thicknesses and van der Waals bonding strengths allows for extraction of the average ballistic phonon penetration depth in a-SiO. With solid experimental data demonstrating ballistic phonon transport through a-SiO, this work should provide important insight into thermal management of electronic devices.
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