No Arabic abstract
Tuning interfacial thermal conductance has been a key task for the thermal management of nanoelectronic devices. Here, it is studied how the interfacial thermal conductance is great influenced by modulating the mass distribution of the interlayer of one-dimensional atomic chain. By nonequilibrium Greens function and machine learning algorithm, the maximum/minimum value of thermal conductance and its corresponding mass distribution are calculated. Interestingly, the mass distribution corresponding to the maximum thermal conductance is not a simple function, such as linear and exponential distribution predicted in previous works, it is similar to a sinusoidal curve around linear distribution for larger thickness interlayer. Further, the mechanism of the abnormal results is explained by analyzing the phonon transmission spectra and density of states. The work provides deep insight into optimizing and designing interfacial thermal conductance by modulating mass distribution of interlayer atoms.
The existed theories and methods for calculating interfacial thermal conductance of solid-solid interface lead to diverse values that deviate from experimental measurements. In this letter, We propose a model to estimate the ITC at high temperature without comprehensive calculations, where the interface between two dissimilar solids can be treated as an amorphous thin layer and the coordination number density across interface becomes a key parameter. Our model predicts that the ITCs of various interfaces at 300K are in a narrow range: 10$^{7}$W m$^{-2}$K$^{-1}$ $sim $10$^{9}$ W m$^{-2}$ K$^{-1}$, which is in good agreement with the experimental measurement.
We proposed a new way, adding intertube atoms, to enhance interfacial thermal conductance (ITC) between SiC-carbon nanotube (CNT) array structure. Non-equilibrium molecular dynamics method was used to study the ITC. The results show that the intertube atoms can significantly enhance the ITC. The dependence of ITC on both the temperature and the number of intertube atoms are shown. The mechanism is analyzed by calculating probability distributions of atomic forces and vibrational density of states. Our study may provide some guidance on enhancing the ITC of CNT-based composites.
Precipitate strengthening of light metals underpins a large segment of industry.Yet, quantitative understanding of physics involved in precipitate formation is often lacking, especially, about interfacial contribution to the energetics of precipitate formation.Here, we report an intricate strain accommodation and free energy minimization mechanism in the formation of Omega precipitates (Al2Cu)in the Al_Cu_Mg_Ag alloy. We show that the affinity between Ag and Mg at the interface provides the driving force for lowering the heat of formation, while substitution between Mg, Al and Cu of different atomic radii at interfacial atomic sites alters interfacial thickness and adjust precipitate misfit strain. The results here highlight the importance of interfacial structure in precipitate formation, and the potential of combining the power of atomic resolution imaging with first-principles theory for unraveling the mystery of physics at nanoscale interfaces.
We have successfully demonstrated Si/GaAs p-n heterostructures using Al2O3 ultra-thin oxide interfacial layers. The band diagram and band offsets were investigated using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and confirm a small discontinuity in the conduction band (0.03 eV) at the interface. The interface defect density (Dit) values of the heterointerface with different ultra-thin oxide (UO) thicknesses ranged from 0.35 nm to 3.5 nm and were also characterized based on a metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitor (MOSCAP) structure using a capacitance-voltage measurement. The results revealed that a thin UO interfacial layer (around 1 nm) maximizes carrier transport property due to better surface passivation and efficient tunneling properties. Thermal property investigation also shows that the Al2O3 UO interfacial layer offers a good tunneling layer but also facilitates phonon transport across the interface. Finally, the electrical characterization of Si/GaAs heterojunction p-n diodes confirms reliable rectifying behavior with an extremely low ideality factor; thus, heterogeneous integration using the UO approach offers a robust way to create more types of heterojunctions between dissimilar semiconductors.
We present experimental measurements of the thermal boundary conductance (TBC) from $77 - 500$ K across isolated heteroepitaxially grown ZnO films on GaN substrates. These data provide an assessment of the assumptions that drive the phonon gas model-based diffuse mismatch models (DMM) and atomistic Greens function (AGF) formalisms for predicting TBC. Our measurements, when compared to previous experimental data, suggest that the TBC can be influenced by long wavelength, zone center modes in a material on one side of the interface as opposed to the vibrational mismatch concept assumed in the DMM; this disagreement is pronounced at high temperatures. At room temperature, we measure the ZnO/GaN TBC as $490lbrack +150, -110rbrack$ MW m$^{-2}$ K$^{-1}$. The disagreement among the DMM and AGF and the experimental data these elevated temperatures suggests a non-negligible contribution from additional modes contributing to TBC that not accounted for in the fundamental assumptions of these harmonic formalisms, such as inelastic scattering. Given the high quality of these ZnO/GaN interface, these results provide an invaluable critical and quantitive assessment of the accuracy of assumptions in the current state of the art of computational approaches for predicting the phonon TBC across interfaces.