No Arabic abstract
Niobium pentoxide (Nb2O5) has been extensively reported for applications of electrochemical energy storage, memristors, solar cells, light emitting diodes (LEDs), and electrochromic devices. The thermal properties of Nb2O5 play a critical role in device performance of these applications. However, very few studies on the thermal properties of Nb2O5 have been reported and a fundamental understanding of heat transport in Nb2O5 is still lacking. The present work closes this gap and provides the first study of thermal conductivity of amorphous Nb2O5 thin films. Ultralow thermal conductivity is observed without any size effect in films as thin as 48 nm, which indicates that propagons contribute negligibly to the thermal conductivity and that the thermal transport is dominated by diffusons. Density-function-theory (DFT) simulations combined with a diffuson-mediated minimum-thermal-conductivity model confirms this finding. Additionally, the measured thermal conductivity is lower than the amorphous limit (Cahill model), which proves that the diffuson model works better than the Cahill model to describe the thermal conduction mechanism in the amorphous Nb2O5 thin films. Additionally, the thermal conductivity does not change significantly with oxygen vacancy concentration. This stable and low thermal conductivity facilitates excellent performance for applications such as memristors.
A wide variation in the disorder strength, as inferred from an order of magnitude variation in the longitudinal resistivity of Co2FeSi (CFS) Huesler alloy thin films of fixed (50 nm) thickness, has been achieved by growing these films on Si(111) substrates at substrate temperatures ranging from room temperature (RT) to 600 C. An in-depth study of the influence of disorder on anomalous Hall resistivity,longitudinal resistivity(LR) and magnetoresistance, enabled by this approach, reveals the following. The side-jump mechanism gives a dominant contribution to anomalous Hall resistivity (AHR) in the CFS thin films, regardless of the degree of disorder present. A new and novel contribution to both LR and AHR characterized by the logarithmic temperature dependence at temperatures below the minimum, exclusive to the amorphous CFS films, originates from the scattering of conduction electrons from the diffusive hydrodynamic modes associated with the longitudinal component of magnetization, called diffusons. In these amorphous CFS films, the electron-diffuson, e d, scattering and weak localization (WL) mechanisms compete with that arising from the inelastic electron magnon, e m, scattering to produce the minimum in longitudinal resistivity, whereas the minimum in AHR is caused by the competing contributions from the e d and e m scattering, as WL does not make any contribution to AHR. In sharp contrast, in crystalline films, enhanced electron electron Coulomb interaction (EEI), which is basically responsible for the resistivity minimum, makes no contribution to AHR with the result that AHR does not exhibit a minimum.
Here we examine the role of the amorphous insulating substrate in the thermal relaxation in thin NbN, InO$_x$, and Au/Ni films at temperatures above 5 K. The studied samples are made up of metal bridges on an amorphous insulating layer lying on or suspended above a crystalline substrate. Noise thermometry was used to measure the electron temperature $T_e$ of the films as a function of Joule power per unit of area $P_{2D}$. In all samples, we observe the dependence $P_{2D}propto T_e^n$ with the exponent $nsimeq 2$, which is inconsistent with both electron-phonon coupling and Kapitza thermal resistance. In suspended samples, the functional dependence of $P_{2D}(T_e)$ on the length of the amorphous insulating layer is consistent with the linear $T$-dependence of the thermal conductivity, which is related to lattice excitations (diffusons) for the phonon mean free path smaller than the dominant phonon wavelength. Our findings are important for understanding the operation of devices embedded in amorphous dielectrics.
An ultralow lattice thermal conductivity of 0.14 W$cdot$ m$^{-1} cdot$ K$^{-1}$ along the $vec b$ axis of As$_2$Se$_3$ single crystals was obtained at 300 K by first-principles calculations involving the density functional theory and the resolution of the Boltzmann transport equation. This ultralow lattice thermal conductivity arises from the combination of two mechanisms: 1) a cascade-like fall of the low-lying optical modes, which results in avoided crossings of these with the acoustic modes, low sound velocities and increased scattering rates of the acoustic phonons; and 2) the repulsion between the lone-pair electrons of the As cations and the valence $p$ orbitals of the Se anions, which leads to an increase in the anharmonicity of the bonds. The physical origins of these mechanisms lie on the nature of the chemical bonding in the material and its strong anisotropy. These results, whose validity has been addressed by comparison with SnSe, for which excellent agreement between the theoretical predictions and the experiments is achieved, point out that As$_2$Se$_3$ could exhibit improved thermoelectric properties.
We report a record low thermal conductivity in polycrystalline MoS2 obtained by varying grain sizes and orientations in ultrathin films. By optimizing the sulphurisation parameters of nanometre-thick Mo layer, we could grow MoS2 films with tuneable morphologies. The thermal conductivity is extracted from a Raman laser power-dependent study on suspended samples. The lowest value of thermal conductivity of 0.27 Wm-1K-1, which reaches a similar value as teflon, is obtained in a polycrystalline sample formed by a combination of horizontally and vertically oriented grains, with respect to the bulk (001) monocrystal. Analysis by means of molecular dynamics and finite element method simulations confirm that such grain arrangement leads to lower grain boundary conductance. We discuss the possible use of these thermal insulating films in the context of electronics and thermoelectricity.
The thermal conductivity of silicon nanowires (SiNWs) is investigated by molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. It is found that the thermal conductivity of SiNWs can be reduced exponentially by isotopic defects at room temperature. The thermal conductivity reaches the minimum, which is about 27% of that of pure 28Si NW, when doped with fifty percent isotope atoms. The thermal conductivity of isotopic-superlattice structured SiNWs depends clearly on the period of superlattice. At a critical period of 1.09 nm, the thermal conductivity is only 25% of the value of pure Si NW. An anomalous enhancement of thermal conductivity is observed when the superlattice period is smaller than this critical length. The ultra-low thermal conductivity of superlattice structured SiNWs is explained with phonon spectrum theory.