Effects of acoustic softening on thermal conductivity beyond group velocity

Abstract

We model the highly reduced thermal conductivity of nanostructured materials observed in nanoribbons. For highly scaled structures, such as wires with diameters on the order of 20nm, physical effects beyond classical boundary scattering, including acoustic softening, become important. To date, work on acoustic softening has focused on reductions in group velocity. However, a reduction in the group velocity implies that the phonon dispersion is modified. Here, we investigate how changes in the phonon dispersion manifest in the mean free path, heat capacity, and group velocity. Including these effects in the modeling of thermal conductivity, we find that softening increases low-temperature thermal conductivity while reducing high temperature thermal conductivity. We further compare the model to experimental data.