A diverse spectrum of technology drivers such as improved thermal barriers, higher efficiency thermoelectric energy conversion, phase-change memory, heat-assisted magnetic recording, thermal management of nanoscale electronics, and nanoparticles for thermal medical therapies are motivating studies of the applied physics of thermal transport at the nanoscale. This review emphasizes developments in experiment, theory, and computation in the past ten years and summarizes the present status of the field. Interfaces become increasingly important on small length scales. Research during the past decade has extended studies of interfaces between simple metals and inorganic crystals to interfaces with molecular materials and liquids with systematic control of interface chemistry and physics. At separations on the order of ∼1 nm, the science of radiative transport through nanoscale gaps overlaps with thermal conduction by the coupling of electronic and vibrational excitations across weakly bonded or rough interface...

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Nanoscale thermal transport. II. 2003–2012

Boron carbide is characterized by a unique combination of properties that make it a material of choice for a wide range of engineering applications. Boron carbide is used in refractory applications due to its high melting point and thermal stability; it is used as abrasive powders and coatings due to its extreme abrasion resistance; it excels in ballistic performance due to its high hardness and low density; and it is commonly used in nuclear applications as neutron radiation absorbent. In addition, boron carbide is a high temperature semiconductor that can potentially be used for novel electronic applications. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the recent advances in understanding of structural and chemical variations in boron carbide and their influence on electronic, optical, vibrational, mechanical, and ballistic properties. Structural instability of boron carbide under high stresses associated with external loading and the nature of the resulting disordered phase are also discussed.

Boron Carbide: Structure, Properties, and Stability under Stress

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews the thermal conductivity of nonmetallic crystals at temperatures comparable to or higher than the Debye temperature. It deals with the intrinsic behavior of such pure crystals at high temperatures. In such crystals, the dominant carriers of thermal energy are phonons and the dominant scattering mechanism to be considered is the intrinsic phonon–phonon scattering. This is a small section of the much larger problem of the thermal conductivity of nonmetallic solids and clearly it neglects possible heat transport by photons, charge carriers, polarons, and magnons. It also neglects other possible phonon scattering mechanisms such as isotopes, impurities, vacancies, charge carriers, dislocations, grain boundaries, and crystal boundaries. It presents the absolute value of the thermal conductivity, K, as determined by phonon–phonon scattering, the temperature dependence of K, the volume dependence of K, the change in K upon melting, and the minimum value of K. The chapter discusses a composite curve for the thermal conductivity versus temperature of pure KCl measured at a constant pressure of, say, one atmosphere.

The Thermal Conductivity of Nonmetallic Crystals

We have measured the temperature dependence of the first-order Raman scattering by phonons in Si, Ge, and $\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{-}\mathrm{S}\mathrm{n}$. The full widths at half maximum of the Raman lines, extrapolated to zero temperature, are 1.24\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.07, 0.75\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.03, and 0.81\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.15 ${\mathrm{cm}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ for Si, Ge, and $\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{-}\mathrm{S}\mathrm{n}$, respectively. The reliability of the data obtained allows a critical examination of the theoretical calculations published so far. We show that the model assuming the decay of the Raman phonon into two acoustical phonons belonging to the same branch, first proposed by Klemens, does not represent adequately the temperature dependence of the Raman linewidth. The most important decay channels are shown to be combinations of optical and acoustical phonons. However, the more complete calculation by Cowley, which involves all possible decay channels, gives very large zero-temperature linewidths. We show that this arises mainly from the poor description of the phonon dispersion curves by the shell model used by Cowley, and that a better agreement between theory and experiment is to be expected by repeating the calculation with Weber's adiabatic bond-charge model.

Temperature dependence of the first-order Raman scattering by phonons in Si, Ge, and α − S n : Anharmonic effects

The kinetics of a first-order, solid-solid phase transition were investigated in the prototypical nanocrystal system CdSe as a function of crystallite size. In contrast to extended solids, nanocrystals convert from one structure to another by single nucleation events, and the transformations obey simple unimolecular kinetics. Barrier heights were observed to increase with increasing nanocrystal size, although they also depend on the nature of the nanocrystal surface. These results are analogous to magnetic phase transitions in nanocrystals and suggest general rules that may be of use in the discovery of new metastable phases.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/276/5311/398.full.pdf

Bernard A. Weinstein

Papers

Raman scattering and phonon dispersion in Si and GaP at very high pressure.

Effect of high pressure on radiative recombination in hydrogenated amorphous silicon