EMRS Spring Meeting 2014 Symposium D: Phonons and fluctuations in low dimensional structures

Abstract

The E-MRS 2014 Spring meeting, held from 26-30th May 2014 in Lille included the Symposium D entitled ‘‘Phonons and Fluctuations in Low Dimensional Structures’’, the first edition of its kind. The symposium was organised in response to the increasing interest in the study of phonons in the context of advances in condensed matter physics, electronics, experimental methods and theory and, in particular, the transfer of energy across atomic interfaces and the propagation of energy in the nm-scale. Steering heat by light or vice versa and examining nano-scale energy conversion (as in thermoelectricity and harvesting e.g. in biological systems) are two aspects that share the underlying science of energy processes across atomic interfaces and energy propagation in the nanoscale and or in confined systems. The nanometer scale defies several of the bulk relationships as confinement of electrons and phonons, locality and non-equilibrium become increasingly important. The propagation of phonons as energy carriers impacts not only heat transfer, but also the very concept and handling of temperature in non-equilibrium and highly localised conditions. Much of the needed progress depends on the materials studied and this symposium targeted the interface material aspects as well as the emerging concepts to advance in this field.The symposium had its origins in a series of meetings and seminars including: (1) the first Phonon Engineering Workshop, funded by Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), the then MICINN, the CNRS, VTT, and several EU projects, held in Saint Feliu de Guixols (Girona, Spain) from 24th to 27th of May 2010 with 65 participants from Europe, the USA and Japan; (2) the first Phonons and Fluctuations workshop, held in Paris on 8th and 9th November 2010, supported by French, Spanish and Finnish national projects and EU projects, attended by about 50 researchers; (3) the second Phonon and Fluctuations workshop, held in Paris on 8th and 9th September 2011, attended by 55 researchers and (4) the 3rd Workshop on Phonons & Fluctuations, held in Saint Feliux de Guixols (Girona, Spain) during 21 to 24th May 2012 attended by 65 participants from Europe and the USA.These papers in this proceeding are examples of the work presented at the symposium. They represent the tip of the iceberg, as the symposium attracted over 100 abstracts. The meeting room was usually full with an audience varying between 40 and 100 participants. The plenary presentation was given by Prof. Gang Chen (MIT) on ‘‘Ballistic and Coherent Phonon Heat Conduction in Bulk Materials and Nanostructures’’, which was warmly welcome by an eager and highly motivated audience. The invited speakers were: Prof. Thomas Dehoux (U. Bordeaux), Dr S. Chung (U. New South Wales, Australia), Prof. A. Goni (CSIC-ICMAB), Prof. Giuliano Benenti (U. Insubria), Dr. Davide Donadio (Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz), Prof. George Fytas (University of Crete), Prof. Dr. Tobias Kippenberg (EPFL, Switzerland), Prof. Bernard Perrin (INSP, Paris), Prof. Gyaneshwar P. Srivastava, U. Exeter) and Prof. Dr. Achim Kittel (U. Oldenburg). The organisers are very grateful to them for supporting the symposium and sharing their latest research results with the symposium participants.The symposium organisers recognised the participation of students and awarded prizes to the two Best Student Presentations, which went to Valeria Lacatena (IEMN, Lille) with an invited presentation entitled ‘‘Efficient reduction of thermal conductivity in silicon using phononic-engineered membranes’’ and to Yan Qing Liu (Institute Neel, Grenoble) who presented the talk entitled ‘‘Sensitive 3-omega measurements of epitaxial thermoelectric thin films’’. The poster session had about fifty posters and the four best poster prizes went to: Konstanze Hahn et al. (U. Cagliari) poster title ‘‘Determination of Thermal conductivity in (nanostructured) SiGe materials’’, Florian Doehring et al. (U. Goettingen) poster title ‘‘Phonon blocking in Multilayers produced by Pulsed Laser Deposition’’, Jordi Gomis-Bresco et al. (ICN2) poster ‘‘ A 1D PhoXonic Crystal’’, Barcelona and Benjamin J Robinson et al. (U. Lancaster) poster ‘‘Scanning Thermal microscopy studies of 2D materials’’.The symposium organisers are grateful to the Scientific Committee members, Prof. Bahram Djafari-Rouhani (France), Prof. Dr. Thomas Dekorsy (Germany), Prof. Anthony Kent (UK), Prof. Fabio Marchesoni (Italy), Dr. Natalio Mingo (France), Prof. Pascal Ruello, (France) and Prof. Javier Viejo-Rodriguez (Spain), for their help with all aspects of evaluation of the scientific level of the presentations in the symposium.The symposium was sponsored by the FP7 ICT FET Open Coordination Action EUPHONON (GA. 612086) and by the CNRS GDR ‘‘Thermal Nanosciences and NanoEngineering’’. The symposium organisers express their sincere thanks to the staff of the E-MRS for continuous support and timely advice in all organisational aspects. We are indebted to Dr. Erwan Guillotel (ICN2) for his assistance with the organisation of the symposium.