Reduction of heat capacity and phonon group velocity in silicon nanowires

Abstract

We report on ab initio linear-response calculations of lattice vibrations in narrow silicon nanowires on the order of 1 nm along the [001], [011], and [111] growth directions. The confinement and nanowire structure substantially alter phonon distributions, resulting in an 15% to 23% reduction in heat capacity and an averaged decrease of 31% in acoustic velocities compared with bulk silicon. Based on these, we estimate an improvement up to 4 fold on thermoelectric performance due solely to the modified lattice vibrations in narrow silicon nanowires over bulk silicon.