Sub-amorphous thermal conductivity in amorphous heterogeneous nanocomposites

Sub-amorphous thermal conductivity in amorphous heterogeneous nanocomposites

Pure amorphous solids are traditionally considered to set the lower bound of thermal conductivity due to their disordered atomic structure that impedes vibrational energy transport. However, the lower limits for thermal conductivity in heterogeneous amorphous solids and the physical mechanisms underlying these limits remain unclear. Here, we use equilibrium molecular dynamics to show that an am...

Thermal conductivity accumulation in amorphous silica and amorphous silicon

We predict the properties of the propagating and nonpropagating vibrational modes in amorphous silica (a-SiO2) and amorphous silicon (a-Si) and, from them, thermal conductivity accumulation functions. The calculations are performed using molecular dynamics simulations, lattice dynamics calculations, and theoretical models. For a-SiO2, the propagating modes contribute negligibly to thermal condu...

High thermal conductivity in electrostatically engineered amorphous polymers

High thermal conductivity is critical for many applications of polymers (for example, packaging of light-emitting diodes), in which heat must be dissipated efficiently to maintain the functionality and reliability of a system. Whereas uniaxially extended chain morphology has been shown to significantly enhance thermal conductivity in individual polymer chains and fibers, bulk polymers with coil...

Beating the amorphous limit in thermal conductivity by superlattices design

The value measured in the amorphous structure with the same chemical composition is often considered as a lower bound for the thermal conductivity of any material: the heat carriers are strongly scattered by disorder, and their lifetimes reach the minimum time scale of thermal vibrations. An appropriate design at the nano-scale, however, may allow one to reduce the thermal conductivity even bel...

Kapitza resistance and the thermal conductivity of amorphous superlattices