# The Universality of Thermal Transport in Amorphous Nanowires at Low Temperatures

## TL;DR

This study demonstrates that amorphous nanowires exhibit a universal quadratic temperature dependence of thermal conductance at low temperatures, dominated by phonon-TLS interactions rather than boundary scattering, challenging conventional models.

## Contribution

The paper provides experimental evidence that the quadratic thermal conductance in amorphous nanowires persists at nanoscales, highlighting the dominance of surface TLS over boundary effects.

## Key findings

- Thermal conductance remains quadratic in temperature in nanowires.
- Phonon-TLS interactions dominate over boundary scattering.
- Surface TLS density is higher than expected.

## Abstract

Thermal transport properties of amorphous materials at low temperatures are governed by the interaction between phonons and localized excitations referred to as tunneling two level systems (TLS). The temperature variation of the thermal conductivity of these amorphous materials is considered as universal and is characterized by a quadratic power law. This is well described by the phenomenological TLS model even though its microscopic explanation is still elusive. Here, by scaling down to the nanometer scale amorphous systems much below the bulk phonon-TLS mean free path, we probed the robustness of that model in restricted geometry systems. Using very sensitive thermal conductance measurements, we demonstrate that the temperature dependence of the thermal conductance of silicon nitride nanostructures remains mostly quadratic independently of the nanowire section. It is not following the cubic power law in temperature as expected in a Casimir-Ziman regime of boundary limited thermal transport. This shows a thermal transport counter intuitively dominated by phonon-TLS interactions and not by phonon-boundary scattering in the nanowires. This could be ascribed to an unexpected high density of TLS on the surfaces which still dominates the phonon diffusion processes at low temperatures and explains why the universal quadratic temperature dependence of thermal conductance still holds for amorphous nanowires.