DOE PAGES title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Thermal conductivity of half-Heusler compounds from first-principles calculations

Abstract

We demonstrate successful application of first-principles-based thermal conductivity calculation on half-Heusler compounds that are promising, environmentally friendly thermoelectric materials. Taking the case of a p-type half-Heusler structure, the harmonic and anharmonic interatomic force constants were obtained from a set of force-displacement data calculated by the density functional theory. Thermal conductivity was obtained by two different methods: (1) Boltzmann-Peierls formula with phonon relaxation times calculated by either Fermi's golden rule of three-phonon scattering processes or spectral analysis of molecular dynamics phase space trajectories and (2) Green-Kubo formula for heat current obtained by equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations. The calculated temperature dependence of thermal conductivity is in reasonable agreement with experiments. The method was extended to alloy crystals assuming the transferability of interatomic force constants. By having access to accurate phonon-dependent transport properties, the contribution from an arbitral subset of phonon modes can be quantified. Furthermore, this helps understanding the influence of nanostructures on thermal conductivity.

Authors:
 [1];  [2];  [2]
  1. The Univ. of Tokyo, Tokyo (Japan); Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
  2. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC) (United States). Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center (S3TEC); Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
OSTI Identifier:
1386851
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1100846
Grant/Contract Number:  
SC0001299; FG02-09ER46577
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Physical Review. B, Condensed Matter and Materials Physics
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 84; Journal Issue: 10; Related Information: S3TEC partners with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (lead); Boston College; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Journal ID: ISSN 1098-0121
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY; solar (photovoltaic); solar (thermal); solid state lighting; phonons; thermal conductivity; thermoelectric; defects; mechanical behavior; charge transport; spin dynamics; materials and chemistry by design; optics; synthesis (novel materials); synthesis (self-assembly); synthesis (scalable processing)

Citation Formats

Shiomi, Junichiro, Esfarjani, Keivan, and Chen, Gang. Thermal conductivity of half-Heusler compounds from first-principles calculations. United States: N. p., 2011. Web. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.84.104302.
Shiomi, Junichiro, Esfarjani, Keivan, & Chen, Gang. Thermal conductivity of half-Heusler compounds from first-principles calculations. United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.84.104302
Shiomi, Junichiro, Esfarjani, Keivan, and Chen, Gang. Wed . "Thermal conductivity of half-Heusler compounds from first-principles calculations". United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.84.104302. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1386851.
@article{osti_1386851,
title = {Thermal conductivity of half-Heusler compounds from first-principles calculations},
author = {Shiomi, Junichiro and Esfarjani, Keivan and Chen, Gang},
abstractNote = {We demonstrate successful application of first-principles-based thermal conductivity calculation on half-Heusler compounds that are promising, environmentally friendly thermoelectric materials. Taking the case of a p-type half-Heusler structure, the harmonic and anharmonic interatomic force constants were obtained from a set of force-displacement data calculated by the density functional theory. Thermal conductivity was obtained by two different methods: (1) Boltzmann-Peierls formula with phonon relaxation times calculated by either Fermi's golden rule of three-phonon scattering processes or spectral analysis of molecular dynamics phase space trajectories and (2) Green-Kubo formula for heat current obtained by equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations. The calculated temperature dependence of thermal conductivity is in reasonable agreement with experiments. The method was extended to alloy crystals assuming the transferability of interatomic force constants. By having access to accurate phonon-dependent transport properties, the contribution from an arbitral subset of phonon modes can be quantified. Furthermore, this helps understanding the influence of nanostructures on thermal conductivity.},
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevB.84.104302},
journal = {Physical Review. B, Condensed Matter and Materials Physics},
number = 10,
volume = 84,
place = {United States},
year = {Wed Sep 28 00:00:00 EDT 2011},
month = {Wed Sep 28 00:00:00 EDT 2011}
}

Journal Article:

Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 185 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

Figures / Tables:

FIG. 1 FIG. 1: The convectional unit cell of HH compound. A primitive cell consists of three atoms A, B, and C. For ZrCoSb HH compound, A = Zr, B = Co, and C = Sb.

Save / Share:

Works referenced in this record:

First-Principles Determination of the Soft Mode in Cubic ZrO 2
journal, May 1997


Role of Disorder and Anharmonicity in the Thermal Conductivity of Silicon-Germanium Alloys: A First-Principles Study
journal, January 2011


Intrinsic lattice thermal conductivity of semiconductors from first principles
journal, December 2007

  • Broido, D. A.; Malorny, M.; Birner, G.
  • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 91, Issue 23
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.2822891

Thermodynamic properties of PbTe, PbSe, and PbS: First-principles study
journal, July 2009


Ab initio calculation of phonon dispersions in semiconductors
journal, March 1991

  • Giannozzi, Paolo; de Gironcoli, Stefano; Pavone, Pasquale
  • Physical Review B, Vol. 43, Issue 9
  • DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.43.7231

Isotope scattering of dispersive phonons in Ge
journal, January 1983


Heat transport in silicon from first-principles calculations
journal, August 2011


Efficiency of ab-initio total energy calculations for metals and semiconductors using a plane-wave basis set
journal, July 1996


Entropy Driven Stabilization of Energetically Unstable Crystal Structures Explained from First Principles Theory
journal, March 2008


Predicting phonon dispersion relations and lifetimes from the spectral energy density
journal, February 2010


The Scattering of Low-Frequency Lattice Waves by Static Imperfections
journal, December 1955


Thermal conductivity of Si–Ge superlattices
journal, June 1997

  • Lee, S. -M.; Cahill, David G.; Venkatasubramanian, Rama
  • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 70, Issue 22
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.118755

Enhancement in Thermoelectric Figure-Of-Merit of an N-Type Half-Heusler Compound by the Nanocomposite Approach
journal, May 2011

  • Joshi, Giri; Yan, Xiao; Wang, Hengzhi
  • Advanced Energy Materials, Vol. 1, Issue 4, p. 643-647
  • DOI: 10.1002/aenm.201100126

Special points for Brillouin-zone integrations
journal, June 1976

  • Monkhorst, Hendrik J.; Pack, James D.
  • Physical Review B, Vol. 13, Issue 12, p. 5188-5192
  • DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.13.5188

The Physics of Phonons
journal, December 1991

  • Srivastava, G. P.; Kresin, Vladimir
  • Physics Today, Vol. 44, Issue 12
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.2810367

QUANTUM ESPRESSO: a modular and open-source software project for quantum simulations of materials
journal, September 2009

  • Giannozzi, Paolo; Baroni, Stefano; Bonini, Nicola
  • Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, Vol. 21, Issue 39, Article No. 395502
  • DOI: 10.1088/0953-8984/21/39/395502

Enhanced Thermoelectric Figure of Merit of p-Type Half-Heuslers
journal, February 2011

  • Yan, Xiao; Joshi, Giri; Liu, Weishu
  • Nano Letters, Vol. 11, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1021/nl104138t

Density-functional approach to nonlinear-response coefficients of solids
journal, June 1989


New Directions for Low-Dimensional Thermoelectric Materials
journal, April 2007

  • Dresselhaus, M. S.; Chen, G.; Tang, M. Y.
  • Advanced Materials, Vol. 19, Issue 8, p. 1043-1053
  • DOI: 10.1002/adma.200600527

<I>A Special Issue on</I> Nanoscale Heat Transfer
journal, February 2008

  • Chen, Gang; Yang, Ronggui; Volz, Sebastian
  • Journal of Computational and Theoretical Nanoscience, Vol. 5, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1166/jctn.2008.001a

Thermoelectric properties of semimetallic (Zr, Hf)CoSb half-Heusler phases
journal, August 2000

  • Xia, Y.; Bhattacharya, S.; Ponnambalam, V.
  • Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 88, Issue 4
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.1305829

Method to extract anharmonic force constants from first principles calculations
journal, April 2008


Thermal Conductivity of MgO Periclase from Equilibrium First Principles Molecular Dynamics
journal, September 2009


High-Thermoelectric Figure of Merit Realized in p-Type Half-Heusler Compounds: ZrCoSnxSb1-x
journal, July 2007

  • Sekimoto, Takeyuki; Kurosaki, Ken; Muta, Hiroaki
  • Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 46, Issue No. 27
  • DOI: 10.1143/JJAP.46.L673

Accurate and simple analytic representation of the electron-gas correlation energy
journal, June 1992


Nanostructured Thermoelectrics: The New Paradigm?
journal, February 2010

  • Kanatzidis, Mercouri G.
  • Chemistry of Materials, Vol. 22, Issue 3
  • DOI: 10.1021/cm902195j

Size effects in molecular dynamics thermal conductivity predictions
journal, June 2010


Computer simulation of local order in condensed phases of silicon
journal, April 1985


Bulk nanostructured thermoelectric materials: current research and future prospects
journal, January 2009

  • Minnich, A. J.; Dresselhaus, M. S.; Ren, Z. F.
  • Energy & Environmental Science, Vol. 2, Issue 5
  • DOI: 10.1039/b822664b

Effect of mechanical milling on thermoelectric properties of half-Heusler ZrNiSn0.98Sb0.02 intermetallic compound
journal, January 2010


Ab initio theory of the lattice thermal conductivity in diamond
journal, September 2009


Tight-binding molecular-dynamics study of phonon anharmonic effects in silicon and diamond
journal, December 1990


Non-Fourier heat conduction in a single-walled carbon nanotube: Classical molecular dynamics simulations
journal, May 2006


Molecular-dynamics simulation of thermal conductivity of silicon crystals
journal, January 2000


Thermal conductivity of individual silicon nanowires
journal, October 2003

  • Li, Deyu; Wu, Yiying; Kim, Philip
  • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 83, Issue 14, p. 2934-2936
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.1616981

(Zr,Hf)Co(Sb,Sn) half-Heusler phases as high-temperature (>700°C) p-type thermoelectric materials
journal, July 2008

  • Culp, Slade R.; Simonson, J. W.; Poon, S. Joseph
  • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 93, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.2959103

Fityk : a general-purpose peak fitting program
journal, September 2010


Transport properties of pure and doped M NiSn ( M =Zr, Hf)
journal, April 1999


Nanoscale thermal transport
journal, January 2003

  • Cahill, David G.; Ford, Wayne K.; Goodson, Kenneth E.
  • Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 93, Issue 2, p. 793-818
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.1524305

Phonon dispersions in Ga x Al 1 x As alloys
journal, July 1990

  • Baroni, Stefano; de Gironcoli, Stefano; Giannozzi, Paolo
  • Physical Review Letters, Vol. 65, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.65.84

Structure and phase stability of Ga x In 1 x P solid solutions from computational alchemy
journal, June 1994


New Directions for Low-Dimensional Thermoelectric Materials
journal, June 2007

  • Dresselhaus, Mildred S.; Chen, Gang; Tang, Ming Y.
  • ChemInform, Vol. 38, Issue 26
  • DOI: 10.1002/chin.200726202

High-resolution X-ray luminescence extension imaging
journal, February 2021


Size effects in molecular dynamics thermal conductivity predictions
text, January 2010

  • Sellan, Daniel P.; Landry, Eric S.; Turney, J. E.
  • Carnegie Mellon University
  • DOI: 10.1184/r1/6490157

The Physics of Phonons
journal, March 1975

  • Reissland, J. A.; Klemens, Paul G.
  • Physics Today, Vol. 28, Issue 3
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.3068883

Predicting phonon dispersion relations and lifetimes from the spectral energy density
text, January 2010

  • Thomas, John A.; Turney, Joseph E.; Iutzi, Ryan M.
  • Carnegie Mellon University
  • DOI: 10.1184/r1/6490109.v1

Ab initio theory of the lattice thermal conductivity in diamond
text, January 2009

  • Ward, Alister; Broido, David; Stewart, Derek A.
  • Universität Regensburg
  • DOI: 10.5283/epub.9466

Heat transport in silicon from first principles calculations
text, January 2011


Works referencing / citing this record:

The high-throughput highway to computational materials design
journal, February 2013

  • Curtarolo, Stefano; Hart, Gus L. W.; Nardelli, Marco Buongiorno
  • Nature Materials, Vol. 12, Issue 3
  • DOI: 10.1038/nmat3568

Large magneto-Seebeck effect in magnetic tunnel junctions with half-metallic Heusler electrodes
journal, November 2017


Rethinking phonons: The issue of disorder
journal, November 2017

  • Seyf, Hamid Reza; Yates, Luke; Bougher, Thomas L.
  • npj Computational Materials, Vol. 3, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1038/s41524-017-0052-9

Perspectives on thermoelectrics: from fundamentals to device applications
journal, January 2012

  • Zebarjadi, M.; Esfarjani, K.; Dresselhaus, M. S.
  • Energy Environ. Sci., Vol. 5, Issue 1, p. 5147-5162
  • DOI: 10.1039/c1ee02497c

Nanoscale heat transfer – from computation to experiment
journal, January 2013

  • Luo, Tengfei; Chen, Gang
  • Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, Vol. 15, Issue 10
  • DOI: 10.1039/c2cp43771f

Suppression of thermal conductivity without impeding electron mobility in n-type XNiSn half-Heusler thermoelectrics
journal, January 2019

  • Barczak, S. A.; Quinn, R. J.; Halpin, J. E.
  • Journal of Materials Chemistry A, Vol. 7, Issue 47
  • DOI: 10.1039/c9ta10128d

Predicting alloy vibrational mode properties using lattice dynamics calculations, molecular dynamics simulations, and the virtual crystal approximation
journal, July 2013

  • Larkin, Jason M.; McGaughey, Alan J. H.
  • Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 114, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4812737

First-principles prediction of phononic thermal conductivity of silicene: A comparison with graphene
journal, January 2015

  • Gu, Xiaokun; Yang, Ronggui
  • Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 117, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4905540

Effective phonon mean free path in polycrystalline nanostructures
journal, April 2015

  • Hori, Takuma; Shiomi, Junichiro; Dames, Chris
  • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 106, Issue 17
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4918703

Research Update: Phonon engineering of nanocrystalline silicon thermoelectrics
journal, September 2016


Enhancement of average thermoelectric figure of merit by increasing the grain-size of Mg 3.2 Sb 1.5 Bi 0.49 Te 0.01
journal, January 2018

  • Kanno, Tsutomu; Tamaki, Hiromasa; Sato, Hiroki K.
  • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 112, Issue 3
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.5016488

Perspective on ab initio phonon thermal transport
journal, August 2019

  • Lindsay, Lucas; Katre, Ankita; Cepellotti, Andrea
  • Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 126, Issue 5
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.5108651

Thermoelectric transport trends in group 4 half-Heusler alloys
journal, October 2019

  • Berland, Kristian; Shulumba, Nina; Hellman, Olle
  • Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 126, Issue 14
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.5117288

First Principles Peierls-Boltzmann Phonon Thermal Transport: A Topical Review
journal, April 2016


Thermal Transport in Disordered Materials
journal, November 2018

  • DeAngelis, Freddy; Muraleedharan, Murali Gopal; Moon, Jaeyun
  • Nanoscale and Microscale Thermophysical Engineering, Vol. 23, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1080/15567265.2018.1519004

First-principles calculations of thermal, electrical, and thermoelectric transport properties of semiconductors
journal, March 2016


First-principles model potentials for lattice-dynamical studies: general methodology and example of application to ferroic perovskite oxides
journal, July 2013

  • Wojdeł, Jacek C.; Hermet, Patrick; Ljungberg, Mathias P.
  • Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, Vol. 25, Issue 30
  • DOI: 10.1088/0953-8984/25/30/305401

Anharmonic force constants extracted from first-principles molecular dynamics: applications to heat transfer simulations
journal, May 2014


Half-Heusler thermoelectrics: a complex class of materials
journal, October 2014


Advances in the measurement and computation of thermal phonon transport properties
journal, January 2015


Phononic thermal conductivity in silicene: the role of vacancy defects and boundary scattering
journal, March 2018

  • Barati, M.; Vazifehshenas, T.; Salavati-fard, T.
  • Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, Vol. 30, Issue 15
  • DOI: 10.1088/1361-648x/aab422

Thermal transport in thermoelectric materials with chemical bond hierarchy
journal, March 2019

  • Yang, Jiong; Wang, Yancheng; Yang, Hongliang
  • Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, Vol. 31, Issue 18
  • DOI: 10.1088/1361-648x/ab03b6

Large thermal anisotropy in monoclinic niobium trisulfide: a thermal expansion tensor study
journal, April 2019

  • Gan, Chee Kwan; Chua, Kun Ting Eddie
  • Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, Vol. 31, Issue 26
  • DOI: 10.1088/1361-648x/ab13f7

The impact of hydrogenation on the thermal transport of silicene
journal, January 2017


Electronic, and thermoelectric properties of half-heusler compounds MCoSb (M = Ti, Zr, Hf): a first principles study
journal, March 2019


Physical, electronic and thermoelectric properties of [001] surfaces of TiCoSb half-Heusler compound
journal, May 2019


Local structure and atomic dynamics in Fe 2 VAl Heusler-type thermoelectric material: The effect of heavy element doping
journal, January 2020


Characterization of rattling in relation to thermal conductivity: Ordered half-Heusler semiconductors
journal, February 2020


Reduction of phonon lifetimes and thermal conductivity of a carbon nanotube on amorphous silica
journal, October 2011


Band structure and thermoelectric properties of half-Heusler semiconductors from many-body perturbation theory
journal, January 2018


Mode Grüneisen parameters of an efficient thermoelectric half-Heusler
text, January 2018

  • Pang, Hong-Jie; Chen, Liu-Cheng; Cao, Zi-Yu
  • Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, DESY, Hamburg
  • DOI: 10.3204/pubdb-2019-00200

Influence of mass contrast in alloy phonon scattering
journal, January 2014

  • Shiga, Takuma; Hori, Takuma; Shiomi, Junichiro
  • Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 53, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.7567/jjap.53.021802

Mode Grüneisen parameters of an efficient thermoelectric half-Heusler
journal, November 2018

  • Pang, Hong-Jie; Chen, Liu-Cheng; Cao, Zi-Yu
  • Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 124, Issue 19
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.5050697

Microscopic mechanism of low thermal conductivity in lead-telluride
text, January 2012


Distribution of phonon lifetime in Brillouin zone
text, January 2015


Influence of mass contrast in alloy phonon scattering
text, January 2015


Large magneto-Seebeck effect in magnetic tunnel junctions with half-metallic Heusler electrodes
text, January 2017