skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Ballistic Phonon Transport in Holey Silicon

Journal Article · · Nano Letters
 [1];  [1];  [2]
  1. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  2. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute, Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States)

When the size of semiconductors is smaller than the phonon mean free path, phonons can carry heat with no internal scattering. Ballistic phonon transport has received attention for both theoretical and practical aspects because Fourier's law of heat conduction breaks down and the heat dissipation in nanoscale transistors becomes unpredictable in the ballistic regime. While recent experiments demonstrate room-temperature evidence of ballistic phonon transport in various nanomaterials, the thermal conductivity data for silicon in the length scale of 10-100 nm is still not available due to experimental challenges. In this work, we show ballistic phonon transport prevails in the cross-plane direction of holey silicon from 35 to 200 nm. The thermal conductivity scales linearly with the length (thickness) even though the lateral dimension (neck) is as narrow as 20 nm. We assess the impact of long-wavelength phonons and predict a transition from ballistic to diffusive regime using scaling models. Our results support strong persistence of long-wavelength phonons in nanostructures and are useful for controlling phonon transport for thermoelectrics and potential phononic applications.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1832454
Journal Information:
Nano Letters, Vol. 15, Issue 5; ISSN 1530-6984
Publisher:
American Chemical SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (32)

Quasi-ballistic thermal transport from nanoscale interfaces observed using ultrafast coherent soft X-ray beams journal November 2009
Holey Silicon as an Efficient Thermoelectric Material journal October 2010
Measurement of ballistic phonon conduction near hotspots in silicon journal May 2001
Theoretical phonon thermal conductivity of Si/Ge superlattice nanowires journal January 2004
Thermal Conductivity Measurements of Ultra-Thin Single Crystal Silicon Layers journal June 2005
Sound and heat revolutions in phononics journal November 2013
Thermal conductivity anisotropy and grain structure in Ge 2 Sb 2 Te 5 films journal April 2011
Mean free path spectra as a tool to understand thermal conductivity in bulk and nanostructures journal January 2013
Observation of room-temperature ballistic thermal conduction persisting over 8.3 µm in SiGe nanowires journal June 2013
Size effects in molecular dynamics thermal conductivity predictions journal June 2010
Direct Measurement of Room-Temperature Nondiffusive Thermal Transport Over Micron Distances in a Silicon Membrane journal January 2013
Calculation of Si nanowire thermal conductivity using complete phonon dispersion relations journal September 2003
Colloquium : Phononics: Manipulating heat flow with electronic analogs and beyond journal July 2012
Silicon nanowires as efficient thermoelectric materials journal January 2008
Heat Generation and Transport in Nanometer-Scale Transistors journal August 2006
Thermal conductivity measurement from 30 to 750 K: the 3ω method journal February 1990
Coherent phonon scattering effects on thermal transport in thin semiconductor nanowires journal October 2007
Phonon-boundary scattering in thin silicon layers journal September 1997
Thermal conductivity of simple and tubular nanowire composites in the longitudinal direction journal September 2005
Enhanced thermoelectric performance of rough silicon nanowires journal January 2008
Phonon scattering in silicon films with thickness of order 100 nm journal May 1999
Quantifying Surface Roughness Effects on Phonon Transport in Silicon Nanowires journal April 2012
Thermal conductivity and ballistic-phonon transport in the cross-plane direction of superlattices journal June 1998
Phonon heat conduction in a semiconductor nanowire journal March 2001
Approximate Analytical Models for Phonon Specific Heat and Ballistic Thermal Conductance of Nanowires journal December 2007
Reduction of thermal conductivity in phononic nanomesh structures journal July 2010
Fabrication of Microdevices with Integrated Nanowires for Investigating Low-Dimensional Phonon Transport journal November 2010
Spectral Phonon Transport Properties of Silicon Based on Molecular Dynamics Simulations and Lattice Dynamics journal February 2008
Comparison of atomic-level simulation methods for computing thermal conductivity journal April 2002
Scaling laws for thermal conductivity of crystalline nanoporous silicon based on molecular dynamics simulations journal September 2011
Thermal conductivity of individual silicon nanowires journal October 2003
Thermal Conductance of Thin Silicon Nanowires journal September 2008

Cited By (27)

Heat guiding and focusing using ballistic phonon transport in phononic nanostructures journal May 2017
Hollow‐Structured Materials for Thermal Insulation journal July 2018
2D Phononic Crystals: Progress and Prospects in Hypersound and Thermal Transport Engineering journal August 2019
Non-uniaxial stress-assisted fabrication of nanoconstriction on vertical nanostructured Si journal June 2019
Modelling of thermal transport through a nanocellular polymer foam: toward the generation of a new superinsulating material journal January 2017
Role of excess tellurium on the electrical and thermal properties in Te-doped paracostibite journal January 2020
Investigation of phonon coherence and backscattering using silicon nanomeshes journal January 2017
Ultra-low thermal conductivity of two-dimensional phononic crystals in the incoherent regime journal April 2018
Kink as a new degree of freedom to tune the thermal conductivity of Si nanoribbons journal October 2019
Investigation of thermal conduction in symmetric and asymmetric nanoporous structures journal December 2017
High-throughput Z T predictions of nanoporous bulk materials as next-generation thermoelectric materials: A material genome approach journal May 2016
TSV-integrated thermoelectric cooling by holey silicon for hot spot thermal management journal November 2018
Thermal Transport in 3D Nanostructures journal August 2019
Phonon-engineered solids constructed from nanocrystals text January 2019
Influence of amorphous layers on the thermal conductivity of phononic crystals journal March 2018
Monte Carlo phonon transport simulations in hierarchically disordered silicon nanostructures journal September 2018
Automatic thermal conductivity measurements with 3-omega technique journal February 2019
Enhancing Modulation of Thermal Conduction in Vanadium Dioxide Thin Film by Nanostructured Nanogaps journal August 2017
Effects of metal silicide inclusion interface and shape on thermal transport in silicon nanocomposites journal July 2019
Reduction of thermal conductivity by surface scattering of phonons in periodic silicon nanostructures journal January 2016
Spectral analysis of nonequilibrium molecular dynamics: Spectral phonon temperature and local nonequilibrium in thin films and across interfaces journal May 2017
Phononic topological insulators based on six-petal holey silicon structures journal February 2019
Impact of pore anisotropy on the thermal conductivity of porous Si nanowires journal August 2018
Phase-dependent thermal conductivity of electrodeposited antimony telluride films journal January 2018
Phonon-engineered solids constructed from nanocrystals journal August 2019
Directional Phonon Suppression Function as a Tool for the Identification of Ultralow Thermal Conductivity Materials journal March 2017
Heat guiding and focusing using ballistic phonon transport in phononic nanostructures text January 2016