Molecular dynamics analysis of spectral characteristics of phonon heat conduction in silicon
Name
77063769-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
8.98 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
8a6f9eee84094ee7d5daa523033e8104
Author(s)
Henry, Asegun Sekou Famake
Advisor(s)
Gang Chen.
Date Issued
2006
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Due to the technological significance of silicon, its heat conduction mechanisms have been studied extensively. However, there have been some lingering questions surrounding the phonon mean free path and importance of different polarizations. This research investigates phonon transport in bulk crystalline silicon using molecular dynamics and lattice dynamics. The interactions are modeled with the environment dependent interatomic potential (EDIP), which was designed to represent the bulk phases of silicon. Temperature and phonon frequency dependent relaxation times are extracted from the MD simulations and used to generate a detailed picture of phonon transport. It is found that longitudinal acoustic phonons have the highest contribution to thermal conductivity and that the phonon mean free path varies by orders of magnitude with respect to the phonon spectra. For relaxation times, we observe moderate anisotropy and good agreement with the frequency dependence predicted by scattering theories. We also find that phonons with mean free paths between .1 and 10 micron are responsible for 50% of the thermal conduction, while phonons with wavelengths less than 10 nanometers make up 80%.
Description
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2006.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-95).
Subjects
Mechanical Engineering.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
Persistent DSpace Link
