Coherent control of thermal transport with pillar-based phononic crystals

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that pillar-based phononic crystals can coherently control thermal conductance at low temperatures, achieving significant reductions, but coherence breaks down at larger lattice constants due to surface roughness.

Contribution

It introduces a new type of phononic crystal using Al pillars on SiN membranes for thermal conductance control, expanding beyond hole-based structures.

Findings

Achieved up to tenfold reduction in thermal conductance with pillar-based PnCs.

Coherent control is effective at small lattice constants but diminishes at larger ones.

Surface roughness causes diffusive scattering, disrupting coherence at larger lattice constants.

Abstract

Two-dimensional phononic crystals (PnCs) formed by a periodic array of holes in a suspended membrane have previously been used to coherently control thermal conductance at low temperatures by modifying the phonon dispersion, thereby altering the phonon group velocities and the density of states. Here, in contrast, we demonstrate that PnCs formed by a periodic array of Al pillars on an uncut \SiN membrane can also be used to achieve similar coherent control. We have measured and simulated the thermal conductance of four pillar-based PnCs with different lattice constants ranging from 0.3 to 5 $\mu$m at sub-Kelvin temperatures, showing a strong up to an order of magnitude reduction in thermal conductance compared to an unaltered membrane. For the larger lattice constants $> 1 $ $\mu$m, however, the experiments do not agree with the coherent theory simulations, which we interpret as a breakdown of coherence induced by increasingly effective diffusive scattering due to the roughness of the Al pillar surfaces.