Issue 10, 2018

Collective thermal transport in pure and alloy semiconductors

Abstract

Conventional models for predicting thermal conductivity of alloys usually assume a pure kinetic regime as alloy scattering dominates normal processes. However, some discrepancies between these models and experiments at very small alloy concentrations have been reported. In this work, we use the full first principles kinetic collective model (KCM) to calculate the thermal conductivity of Si1−xGex and InxGa1−xAs alloys. The calculated thermal conductivities match well with the experimental data for all alloy concentrations. The model shows that the collective contribution must be taken into account at very low impurity concentrations. For higher concentrations, the collective contribution is suppressed, but normal collisions have the effect of significantly reducing the kinetic contribution. The study thus shows the importance of the proper inclusion of normal processes even for alloys for accurate modeling of thermal transport. Furthermore, the phonon spectral distribution of the thermal conductivity is studied in the framework of KCM, providing insights to interpret the superdiffusive regime introduced in the truncated Lévy flight framework.

Graphical abstract: Collective thermal transport in pure and alloy semiconductors

Article information

Article type
Communication
Submitted
16 11月 2017
Accepted
19 2月 2018
First published
26 2月 2018
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2018,20, 6805-6810

Collective thermal transport in pure and alloy semiconductors

P. Torres, A. Mohammed, À. Torelló, J. Bafaluy, J. Camacho, X. Cartoixà, A. Shakouri and F. X. Alvarez, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2018, 20, 6805 DOI: 10.1039/C7CP07738F

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