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Effective thermal management of electronic devices encounters substantial challenges owing to the notable power densities involved. Here, we propose layered MoS2 phononic crystals (PnCs) that can effectively reduce thermal conductivity (κ) with relatively small disruption of electrical conductivity (σ), offering a potential thermal management solution for nanoelectronics. These layered PnCs exhibit remarkable efficiency in reducing κ, surpassing that of Si and SiC PnCs with similar periodicity by ~100-fold. Specifically, in suspended MoS2 PnCs, we measure an exceptionally low κ down to 0.1 watts per meter kelvin, below the amorphous limit while preserving the crystalline structure. These findings are supported by molecular dynamics simulations that account for the film thickness, porosity, and temperature. We demonstrate the approach efficiency by fabricating suspended heat-routing structures that effectively confine and guide heat flow in prespecified directions. This study underpins the immense potential of layered materials as directional heat spreaders, thermal insulators, and active components for thermoelectric devices.

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Despite the increasing interest in the physical properties of the newly synthesized three-dimensional (3D) nano-architectured graphene, there are still few studies on the thermal transport properties of this family of materials. In the present work, heat transport of 3D h-BN and its mechanical response are systematically explored through first principles calculations. It is fascinating to find that the thermal conductivity of the 3D h-BN honeycomb structure could be significantly modulated by mechanical tension. Its lattice thermal conductivity perpendicular to the hole axis increases by 7.2 times at 6% critical strain, compared to only 0.67 times for that of the strained 3D graphene counterpart. The structure's thermal conductivity versus mechanical tension differs quantitatively and qualitatively from the monotonic downward trend of traditional bulk diamond or silicon under tension. This deviation from the classic behavior could be attributed to the modification of the phonon lifetimes, together with the competition between group velocities of low- and high-lying phonons under strain. Finally, the phonon vibrational modes contribution analysis indicates that the BN ribbon atoms contribute mainly at a lower frequency range. Our results provide important insights into potential employment of nano-architectured 3D white graphene for thermal management in relevant industrial applications.

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Recently, it has been shown that high density nanoconfined water was the reason of the important enhancement of the effective thermal conductivity up to a factor of 50% of a nanoporous silicon filled with water. In this work, using molecular dynamics simulations, we further investigate the role of the temperatureT(from 285 to 360 K) on the thermal conductivity enhancement of nanohybrid porous silicon and water system. Furthermore, by studying and analysing several structural and dynamical parameters of the nanoconfined water, we give physical insights of the observed phenomena. Upon increasing the temperature of the system, the thermal conductivity of the hybrid system increases reaching a maximum forT= 300 K. With this article, we prove the existence of new heat flux channels between a solid matrix and a nanoconfined liquid, with clear signatures both in the radial distribution function, mean square displacements, water molecules orientation, hydrogen bond networks and phonon density of states.

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In this article, the effect on the vibrational and thermal properties of gradually interconnected nanoinclusions embedded in an amorphous silicon matrix is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. The nanoinclusion arrangement ranges from an aligned sphere array to an interconnected mesh of nanowires. Wave-packet simulations scanning different polarizations and frequencies reveal that the interconnection of the nanoinclusions at constant volume fraction induces a strong increase of the mean free path of high frequency phonons, but does not affect the energy diffusivity. The mean free path and energy diffusivity are then used to estimate the thermal conductivity, showing an enhancement of the effective thermal conductivity due to the existence of crystalline structural interconnections. This enhancement is dominated by the ballistic transport of phonons. Equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations confirm the tendency, although less markedly. This leads to the observation that coherent energy propagation with a moderate increase of the thermal conductivity is possible. These findings could be useful for energy harvesting applications, thermal management or for mechanical information processing.

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This corrects the article DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.95.062801.

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In this work we study the effects of disorder on the thermal conductivity of porous 100 nm thick silicon membranes, in which the size, shape and position of the pores were varied randomly. Measurements using two-laser Raman thermometry on both non-patterned and porous membranes revealed more than a 10-fold reduction of the thermal conductivity compared to that of bulk silicon and a six-fold reduction compared to non-patterned membranes for the sample with random pore shapes. Using Monte Carlo methods we solved the Boltzmann transport equation for phonons and compared different possibilities of pore organization and its influence on the thermal conductivity of the samples. The simulations confirmed that the strongest reduction of thermal conductivity is achieved for a distribution of pores with arbitrary shapes that partially overlap. Up to a 15% reduction of the thermal conductivity with respect to the purely circular pores was predicted for a porous membrane with 37% filling fraction. The effect of the pore shape and distribution was further studied. Maps of temperature and heat flux distributions clearly showed that for particular pore placement heat transport can be efficiently blocked and hot spots can be found in narrow channels between pores. These findings have an impact on the fabrication of membrane-based thermoelectric devices, where low thermal conductivity is required. This work shows that for porous membranes with a given filling fraction the thermal conductivity can be further modified by introducing disorder in the shape and placement of the pores.

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In this work we present a molecular dynamics investigation of thermal transport in a silica-gallium nitride nanocomposite. A surprising enhancement of the thermal conductivity for crystalline volume fractions larger than 5% is found, which cannot be predicted by an effective medium approach, not even including percolation effects, the model systematically leading to an underestimation of the effective thermal conductivity. The behavior can instead be reproduced if an effective volume fraction twice larger than the real one is assumed, which translates into a percolation effect surprisingly stronger than the usual one. Such a scenario can be understood in terms of a phonon tunneling between inclusions, enhanced by the iso-orientation of all particles. Indeed, if a misorientation is introduced, the thermal conductivity strongly decreases. We also show that a percolating nanocomposite clearly stands in a different position than other nanocomposites, where thermal transport is dominated by the interface scattering and where parameters such as the interface density play a major role, differently from our case.

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We present an efficient technique for the evaluation of the Gibbs adsorption of a liquid on a solid substrate. The behavior of a water nanodroplet on a silicon surface is simulated with molecular dynamics. An external field with varying strength is applied on the system to tune the solid-liquid interfacial contact area. A linear dependence of droplet's volume as a function of the contact area is observed. We introduce a modified Young-Laplace equation to explain the influence of the Gibbs adsorption on the nanodroplet volume contraction. Fitting of the molecular dynamics results with the analytical approach allows us to evaluate the number of atoms per unit area adsorbed on the substrate, which quantifies the Gibbs adsorption. Thus, a threshold of a droplet size is obtained, for which the impact of the adsorption is crucial. For instance, a water droplet with 5 nm radius has 3% of its molecules adsorbed on silicon substrate, while for droplets less than 1 nm this amount is more than 10%. The presented results could be beneficial for the evaluation of the adsorption impact on the physical-chemical properties of nanohybrid systems with large surface-to-volume ration.

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We report the thermal transport properties of wurtzite GaN in the presence of dislocations using molecular dynamics simulations. A variety of isolated dislocations in a nanowire configuration are analyzed and found to considerably reduce the thermal conductivity while impacting its temperature dependence in a different manner. Isolated screw dislocations reduce the thermal conductivity by a factor of two, while the influence of edge dislocations is less pronounced. The relative reduction of thermal conductivity is correlated with the strain energy of each of the five studied types of dislocations and the nature of the bonds around the dislocation core. The temperature dependence of the thermal conductivity follows a physical law described by a T-1 variation in combination with an exponent factor that depends on the material's nature, type and the structural characteristics of the dislocation core. Furthermore, the impact of the dislocation density on the thermal conductivity of bulk GaN is examined. The variation and absolute values of the total thermal conductivity as a function of the dislocation density are similar for defected systems with both screw and edge dislocations. Nevertheless, we reveal that the thermal conductivity tensors along the parallel and perpendicular directions to the dislocation lines are different. The discrepancy of the anisotropy of the thermal conductivity grows with increasing density of dislocations and it is more pronounced for the systems with edge dislocations. Besides the fundamental insights of the presented results, these could also be used for the identification of the type of dislocations when one experimentally obtains the evolution of thermal conductivity with temperature since each type of dislocation has a different signature, or one could extract the density of dislocations with a simple measurement of thermal anisotropy.

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We report on the size dependence of the surface tension of a free surface of an isotropic fluid. The size dependence of the surface tension is evaluated based on the Gibbs-Tolman-Koenig-Buff equation for positive and negative values of curvatures and the Tolman lengths. For all combinations of positive and negative signs of curvature and the Tolman length, we succeed to have a continuous function, avoiding the existing discontinuity at zero curvature (flat interfaces). As an example, a water droplet in the thermodynamical equilibrium with the vapor is analyzed in detail. The size dependence of the surface tension and the Tolman length are evaluated with the use of experimental data of the International Association for the Properties of Water and Steam. The evaluated Tolman length of our approach is in good agreement with molecular dynamics and experimental data.

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We report on scaling behavior of the thermal conductivity of width-modulated nanowires and nanofilms that have been studied with the phonon Monte Carlo technique. It has been found that the reduction of the thermal conductivity scales with the nanostructure transmissivity, a property entirely determined by the modulation geometry, irrespectively of the material choice. Tuning of the thermal conductivity is possible by the nanostructure width-modulation without strict limitations for the modulation profile. In addition, a very significant constriction thermal resistance due to width-discontinuity has been identified, in analogy to the contact thermal resistance between two dissimilar materials. The constriction thermal resistance also scales with the modulated nanostructure transmissivity. Our conclusions are generic indicating that a wide range of materials can be used for the modulated nanostructures. Direct heat flow control can be provided by designing the nanostructure width-modulation.

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Thermal transport properties of crystalline/amorphous silicon superlattices using molecular dynamics are investigated. We show that the cross-plane conductivity of the superlattices is very low and close to the conductivity of bulk amorphous silicon even for amorphous layers as thin as ≃ 6 Å. The cross-plane thermal conductivity weakly increases with temperature which is associated with a decrease of the Kapitza resistance with temperature at the crystalline/amorphous interface. This property is further investigated considering the spatial analysis of the phonon density of states in domains close to the interface. Interestingly, the crystalline/amorphous superlattices are shown to display large thermal anisotropy, according to the characteristic sizes of elaborated structures. These last results suggest that the thermal conductivity of crystalline/amorphous superlattices can be phonon engineered, providing new directions for nanostructured thermoelectrics and anisotropic materials in thermal transport.

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In this paper we present a systematic and well controlled procedure for building atomistic amorphous/crystalline interfaces in silicon, dedicated to the molecular dynamics simulations of superlattices and core/shell nanowires. The obtained structures depend on the technique used to generate the amorphous phase and their overall quality is estimated through comparisons with structural information and interfacial energies available from experimental and theoretical results. While most of the related studies focus on a single planar interface, we consider here both the generation of multiple superlattice planar interfaces and core/shell nanowire structures. The proposed method provides periodic homogeneous and reproducible, atomically sharp and defect free interface configurations at low temperature and pressure. We also illustrate how the method may be used to predict the thermal transport properties of composite crystalline/amorphous superlattices.

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: We present a fabrication process of low-cost superlattices and simulations related with the heat dissipation on them. The influence of the interfacial roughness on the thermal conductivity of semiconductor/semiconductor superlattices was studied by equilibrium and non-equilibrium molecular dynamics and on the Kapitza resistance of superlattice's interfaces by equilibrium molecular dynamics. The non-equilibrium method was the tool used for the prediction of the Kapitza resistance for a binary semiconductor/metal system. Physical explanations are provided for rationalizing the simulation results. PACS: 68.65.Cd, 66.70.Df, 81.16.-c, 65.80.-g, 31.12.xv.

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We present a molecular dynamics investigation of the cross-plane thermal conductivity of superlattices using the non-equilibrium molecular dynamics method. The purpose is to investigate the influence of the interfaces, which is expected to be important in those nanostructures where the superlattice period is smaller than the phonon mean free path. In contrast to previous studies, more realistic interfaces are considered: interfacial roughness is modeled using atomic rectangular islands and interdiffusion is taken into account. It is shown that thermal conductivity is very sensitive to the detailed interfacial shape and to the presence of interdiffusion. This may be relevant to recent experiments.

Asunto(s)

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The adsorption of CO on a Au/Ni(111) surface alloy has been investigated using ab initio density-functional calculations. We show that, in contrast to a Au adatom on a Ni(111) surface, a Au impurity binds CO only very weakly. In addition, the impurity induces a reduction of the adsorption energies which is strictly localized to its immediate neighbourhood. The consequences for possible reaction scenarios are discussed.