Abstract
Lattice thermal conductivity of a quantum well limited by umklapp, impurity, and boundary scattering was investigated theoretically by taking into account dispersion of confined acoustic-phonon modes. We show that strong modification of phonon group velocities due to spatial confinement leads to a significant increase in the phonon relaxation rates. From the numerical calculations, we predict a decrease by an order of magnitude of the lattice thermal conductivity in a 100-\AA{}-wide free-standing quantum well. Our theoretical results are consistent with recent experimental investigations of the lateral thermal conductivity of nitride/silicon/oxide membranes conducted in our group.
Keywords
Condensed matter physicsPhononThermal conductivityMaterials scienceScatteringPhonon scatteringSurface phononPhysicsQuantum mechanics
Affiliated Institutions
Related Publications
Thermal Transport Measurements of Individual Multiwalled Nanotubes
The thermal conductivity and thermoelectric power of a single carbon nanotube were measured using a microfabricated suspended device. The observed thermal conductivity is more t...
<i>Ab initio</i>variational approach for evaluating lattice thermal conductivity
We present a first-principles theoretical approach for evaluating the lattice thermal conductivity based on the exact solution of the Boltzmann transport equation. We use the va...
Thermal physics of the lead chalcogenides PbS, PbSe, and PbTe from first principles
The lead chalcogenides represent an important family of functional materials,\nin particular due to the benchmark high-temperature thermoelectric performance\nof PbTe. A number ...
First principles study of thermal conductivity cross-over in nanostructured zinc-chalcogenides
Systematic first principles studies of zinc-chalcogenides have been performed to understand their thermal transport behaviour. We have applied the Boltzmann transport equation i...
High-Thermoelectric Performance of Nanostructured Bismuth Antimony Telluride Bulk Alloys
The dimensionless thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT) in bismuth antimony telluride (BiSbTe) bulk alloys has remained around 1 for more than 50 years. We show that a peak ZT of ...
Publication Info
- Year
- 1998
- Type
- article
- Volume
- 58
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 1544-1549
- Citations
- 635
- Access
- Closed
External Links
Social Impact
Altmetric
PlumX Metrics
Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions
Citation Metrics
635
OpenAlex
Cite This
Alexander A. Balandin,
Kang L. Wang
(1998).
Significant decrease of the lattice thermal conductivity due to phonon confinement in a free-standing semiconductor quantum well.
Physical review. B, Condensed matter
, 58
(3)
, 1544-1549.
https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.58.1544
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.1103/physrevb.58.1544