Quantifying thermal transport in amorphous silicon using mean free path spectroscopy
Author(s)
Pan, Ying
Zhou, Jiawei
Chen, Gang
Date Issued
April 2020
Journal
American Physical Society
Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)
Citation
Pan, Ying et al. "Quantifying thermal transport in amorphous silicon using mean free path spectroscopy." Physical Review B 101, 14 (April 2020): 144203 © 2020 American Physical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The wide application of amorphous materials in solar cells, memristors, and optical sensors has stimulated interest in understanding heat conduction in amorphous systems owing to their thermal management issues. Thermal transport in amorphous materials fundamentally differs from their crystalline counterparts due to the lack of long-range order. Despite great progress in understanding the thermal transport in crystalline materials over the past few decades from both first-principles computations and thermal transport characterizations, details of heat conduction in amorphous systems remain largely unknown. Here, we quantify different types of heat carriers in amorphous silicon using mean free path spectroscopy, with characteristic sizes down to 50 nm. We show that despite its disordered nature, more than half of thermal conductivity is contributed by propagating vibrational waves, which have mean free paths mostly above 100 nm. This provides direct evidence supporting the diversity of heat carriers in amorphous systems; some modes transport heat as propagating waves, while others do not. Our results suggest mean free path spectroscopy is a versatile tool for understanding thermal transport in disordered systems.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.101.144203
