Fermi Surface Nesting and Phonon Frequency Gap Drive Anomalous Thermal Transport

• 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
• ISSN: 0031-9007; 1079-7114
• DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.121.175901

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.