Phonon Band Structure and Thermal Transport Correlation in a Layered Diatomic Crystal

TL;DR

This study explores how phonon dispersion characteristics influence thermal conductivity in layered diatomic crystals, introducing novel metrics to better understand and predict thermal transport mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces new band diagram metrics to quantify phonon dispersion effects on thermal conductivity and links these metrics to physical mechanisms in layered diatomic crystals.

Findings

Thermal conductivity correlates with acoustic phonon extent.

Stop bands decrease thermal conductivity.

Dispersion metrics are most sensitive at low temperatures.

Abstract

To elucidate the relationship between a crystal's structure, its thermal conductivity, and its phonon dispersion characteristics, an analysis is conducted on layered diatomic Lennard-Jones crystals with various mass ratios. Lattice dynamics theory and molecular dynamics simulations are used to predict the phonon dispersion curves and the thermal conductivity. The layered structure generates directionally dependent thermal conductivities lower than those predicted by density trends alone. The dispersion characteristics are quantified using a set of novel band diagram metrics, which are used to assess the contributions of acoustic phonons and optical phonons to the thermal conductivity. The thermal conductivity increases as the extent of the acoustic modes increases, and decreases as the extent of the stop bands increases. The sensitivity of the thermal conductivity to the band diagram metrics is highest at low temperatures, where there is less anharmonic scattering, indicating that dispersion plays a more prominent role in thermal transport in that regime. We propose that the dispersion metrics (i) provide an indirect measure of the relative contributions of dispersion and anharmonic scattering to the thermal transport, and (ii) uncouple the standard thermal conductivity structure-property relation to that of structure-dispersion and dispersion-property relations, providing opportunities for better understanding of the underlying physical mechanisms and a potential tool for material design.