Heat transport in amorphous silicon: Interplay between morphology and disorder
Abstract
We present a theoretical study of the thermal conductivity (κ) of amorphous silicon (a-Si) based on molecular and lattice dynamics. We find that the majority of heat carriers are quasi-stationary modes; however the small proportion (≃3%) of propagating vibrations contributes to about half of the value of κ. We show that in bulk samples the mean free path of several long-wavelength modes is on the order of microns; this value may be substantially decreased either in thin films or in systems with etched holes, resulting in a smaller thermal conductivity. Our results provide a unified explanation of several experiments and show that kinetic theory cannot be applied to describe thermal transport in a-Si at room temperature.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Phonon-like modes with mean free paths greater than 10 nm account for the remaining half of the bulk thermal conductivity in a-Si.
“Phonon-like modes with MFPs 410 nm account for the remaining half.”
From Broadband phonon mean free path contributions to thermal conductivity measured using frequency domain thermoreflectance (2013) · cites this paper as [36]
Using atomistic calculations, He et al. define modes with mean free paths less than 10 nm as diffusons, which contribute approximately half to the bulk thermal conductivity.
“Using atomistic calculations, He et al. 36 define modes with MFPs o10 nm as diffusons, which contribute approximately half to the bulk thermal conductivity.”
From Broadband phonon mean free path contributions to thermal conductivity measured using frequency domain thermoreflectance (2013) · cites this paper as [36]
More recent simulations and experiments have also pointed to the existence of long mean free path phonon-like modes in a-Si.
“More recent simulations and experiments have also pointed to the existence of long MFP phonon-like modes in a-Si 34,[36][37][38] .”
From Broadband phonon mean free path contributions to thermal conductivity measured using frequency domain thermoreflectance (2013) · cites this paper as [36]
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Regner, K. T., Sellan, D. P., Su, Z., Amon, C. H., McGaughey, A. J. H., & Malen, J. A. (2013) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/ncomms2630 · Cited by 646 · see citing works
- Authors
- He, Y., Donadio, D., & Galli, G.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Davis (US)
- Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (DE)
- Venue
- Applied Physics Letters
- Publisher
- AIP Publishing
- Published
- 2011-04-04
- Volume
- 98
- Issue
- 14
- ISSN
- 0003-6951 (ISSN-L)
- 1077-3118
- OpenAlex
- W2060893117
- Cited by
- 121
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 14 · 2013: 7 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 4.39
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2011-06-20)
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Applied Physics Letters (publishedVersion)
- Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (submittedVersion)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- U.S. Department of Energy (DE-FC02-06ER25777)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Materials Chemistry › Thermal properties of materials
- Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Materials Chemistry › Material Dynamics and Properties
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Mechanics of Materials › Thermoelastic and Magnetoelastic Phenomena
- Keywords
- amorphous silicon, thermal conductivity, heat transport, lattice dynamics, mean free path, thin films, disorder, morphology (materials science)
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
