Abstract
The knowledge of interfacial phonon transport accounting for detailed phonon spectral properties is desired because of its importance for design of nanoscale energy systems. In this work, we investigate the interfacial phonon transport through Si/Ge multi-layer films using an efficient Monte Carlo scheme with spectral transmissivity, which is validated for cross-plane phonon transport through both Si or Ge single-layer and Si/Ge bi-layer thin films by comparing with the discrete-ordinates solution. Different thermal boundary conductances between even the same material pair are declared at different interfaces within the multilayer system. Furthermore, the thermal boundary conductances at different interfaces show different trends with varying total system size, with the variation slope very different as well. The results are much different from those in the bi-layer thin film or periodic superlattice. These unusual behaviors can be attributed to combined interfacial local non-equilibrium effect and constraint effect from other interfaces.
Highlights
In the 1950s, semiconductors became to be used as thermoelectric material for energy conversion in refrigeration (Majumdar, 2004)
We introduce the spectral diffuse mismatch model (SDMM) into the kinetic-type Monte Carlo scheme (Péraud and Hadjiconstantinou, 2012; Péraud et al, 2014) to study the interfacial phonon transport through Si/Ge multilayer film
The benchmark is not easy and direct mainly due to the following two reasons: (a) multiple uncertain factors in realistic interface system make a direct comparison to experimental results almost impossible; (b) the analytical expression of thermal boundary conductance is derived based on the difference of emitted phonon temperature at the interface (Simons, 1974; Chen, 1998), which is difficult to specify in Monte Carlo scheme
Summary
In the 1950s, semiconductors became to be used as thermoelectric material for energy conversion in refrigeration (Majumdar, 2004). The phonon transmission coefficient is the crucial parameter in determining the thermal boundary conductance, which is defined as the heat flux across the interface over the interfacial temperature jump (Swartz and Pohl, 1989).
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