Structurally Triggered Breakdown of the Phonon Gas Model in Crystalline Metal-Organic Frameworks

TL;DR

This study demonstrates how grafting flexible side chains onto metal-organic frameworks induces a transition from propagating to diffusive heat transport, drastically reducing thermal conductivity and creating glass-like thermal behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a molecular engineering approach that triggers a breakdown of the phonon gas model in crystalline frameworks, enabling programmable control over thermal transport regimes.

Findings

Thermal conductivity decreases by ~70% with side chain grafting.

Functionalized MOFs exhibit a temperature-independent glass-like plateau.

Phonon modes become critically damped with nanometer mean free paths.

Abstract

While crystalline materials with glass-like thermal conductivity are fundamentally intriguing, structurally triggering the transition from propagating to diffusive heat transport within a single framework remains a formidable challenge. Here, using extensive machine learning molecular dynamics, we demonstrate a fundamental thermal transport crossover in metal-organic frameworks. We reveal that grafting flexible side chains onto a pristine MOF backbone acts as a structural switch, strongly reducing the thermal conductivity by $\sim$70% (from $\sim 0.7$ to $\sim 0.2\ \text{W m}^{-1}\text{K}^{-1}$ at 300 K). Crucially, the functionalized derivatives exhibit a drastic transition from a classical Peierls $\sim 1/T$ decay to an anomalous, temperature-independent glass-like plateau. Reciprocal- and real-space analyses reveal the microscopic origins: the side chains act as built-in local resonators that trap acoustic energy via strong low-frequency resonant hybridization, while simultaneously inducing extreme steric crowding. Consequently, the heat-carrying phonon modes become critically damped, with their mean free paths strictly confined to the nanometer scale and their lifetimes collapsing to the Ioffe-Regel limit. This work establishes a highly programmable molecular engineering strategy to dismantle the phonon gas model, forcing crystalline frameworks into an extreme diffusive transport regime.