Evidence of Ballistic Thermal Transport in Lithium Niobate at Room Temperature

TL;DR

This study provides evidence of ballistic phonon transport at room temperature in lithium niobate, revealing a phonon mean free path of approximately 425 microns, which could enable room-temperature phononic devices.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates room-temperature ballistic phonon transport in lithium niobate with an unprecedented mean free path of 425 microns, surpassing previous literature.

Findings

Phonon mean free path in lithium niobate is about 425 microns.

Ballistic transport persists up to approximately 4 mm length.

Material exhibits diffusive transport beyond 4 mm.

Abstract

In ballistic transport, heat carriers such as phonons travel through the solid without any scattering or interaction. Therefore, there is no temperature gradient in the solid, which seems to transport the heat without getting heated itself. Ballistic transport is typically seen in high purity crystals at either temperatures below ~10 K, or physical size below ~100 nm, where the mean free path of the carrier is larger than the solid itself. In this letter, we show evidence of ballistic transport at room temperature in lithium niobate wafers in the in-plane and cross-plane directions under both steady state and high frequency heating that are monitored using both infrared and resistance thermometry. We report phonon mean free path in lithium niobate around 425 microns, which is about 50 times higher than the largest phonon mean free path in the literature at room temperature. Above this length-scale, temperature gradient gradually emerges and the material shows completely diffusive, bulk transport at about 4 mm length. Our observations will impact phonon-based electronics such as thermal transistor, thermal logic gate and memory currently impossible at room temperature. If 1 micron electron mean free path in graphene gives the highest-mobility, the 425 microns mean free path of phonons in this research may realize phononics without any need for nanoscale size or ultra-cold temperatures.