Fermi Surface Nesting and Phonon Frequency Gap Drive Anomalous Thermal Transport

The lattice thermal conductivity, k_{L}, of typical metallic and nonmetallic crystals decreases rapidly with increasing temperature because phonons interact more strongly with other phonons than they do with electrons. Using first principles calculations, we show that k_{L} can become nearly indepen...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2018-10, Vol.121 (17), p.175901-175901, Article 175901
Main Authors: Li, Chunhua, Ravichandran, Navaneetha K, Lindsay, Lucas, Broido, David
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Conduction heating
Conductive heat transfer
Crystal lattices
Electrons
Fermi surfaces
First principles
Heat transmission
MATERIALS SCIENCE
Metal carbides
Metal compounds
Nesting
Niobium carbide
Phonons
Tantalum
Tantalum carbide
Thermal conductivity
Transition metals
Vanadium carbide
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The lattice thermal conductivity, k_{L}, of typical metallic and nonmetallic crystals decreases rapidly with increasing temperature because phonons interact more strongly with other phonons than they do with electrons. Using first principles calculations, we show that k_{L} can become nearly independent of temperature in metals that have nested Fermi surfaces and large frequency gaps between acoustic and optic phonons. Then, the interactions between phonons and electrons become much stronger than the mutual interactions between phonons, giving the fundamentally different k_{L} behavior. This striking trend is revealed here in the group V transition metal carbides, vanadium carbide, niobium carbide, and tantalum carbide, and it should also occur in several other metal compounds. This work gives insights into the physics of heat conduction in solids and identifies a new heat flow regime driven by the interplay between Fermi surfaces and phonon dispersions.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/physrevlett.121.175901