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Reducing the thermal conductivity of silicon by nanostructure patterning

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Abstract

Based on molecular dynamics simulations, we propose using nanostructure-patterned silicon for thermoelectric applications. Three typical examples are (i) fractal-like nanoporous Si, (ii) etched Si nanofilm, and (iii) quasi-periodic layered SiGe. All of them can exhibit very low thermal conductivity (less than 1.0 W m−1 K−1) and may be mass produced with standard fabrication techniques such as molecular beam epitaxy or Czochralski process. By maintaining good electronic transport of bulk Si, it is possible to achieve ZT∼5.0 at room temperature.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the “973 Program” of China (Grant No. 2007CB607501), the National Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 51172167), and the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University. We also acknowledge financial support from the interdiscipline and postgraduate programs under the “Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities”. All the calculations were performed in the PC Cluster from Sugon Company of China.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Artificial Micro- and Nano-structures of Ministry of Education and School of Physics and Technology, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Y. W. Wen, H. J. Liu, L. Pan, X. J. Tan, H. Y. Lv & J. Shi

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, Hubei, China

    Y. W. Wen

  3. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    X. F. Tang

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  1. Y. W. Wen
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  2. H. J. Liu
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Correspondence to H. J. Liu.

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Wen, Y.W., Liu, H.J., Pan, L. et al. Reducing the thermal conductivity of silicon by nanostructure patterning. Appl. Phys. A 110, 93–98 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-012-7417-1

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