Tunable Anisotropic Lattice Thermal Conductivity in One-Dimensional Superlattices from Molecular Dynamics Simulations#br#

  • WANG Xiuqi ,
  • AN Meng ,
  • MA Weigang ,
  • ZHANG Xing
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  • 1. Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
    2. College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Shaanxi University of Science and Technology, Xi’an 710021, China

Online published: 2023-12-01

Supported by

The project was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 52176078, 52006130, and 51827807), and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Nos. 2020M670321 and 2021T140359).

Copyright

Science Press, Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, CAS and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022

Abstract

Engineering nanostructured superlattices provides an effective solution toward the realization of high-performance thermoelectric device and thermal management materials, where the anisotropic thermal conductivity is critical for designing orientation-dependent thermal devices. Herein, the lattice thermal conductivity anisotropy of Al/Ag superlattices as one typical example of superlattice materials is investigated utilizing non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations. The cross-plane and in-plane lattice thermal conductivities of one-dimensional superlattices are in the ranges of 0.5–3.2 W/(m·K) and 1.8–5.1 W/(m·K) at different period lengths, respectively, both of which are smaller than those of bulk materials. More specifically, the cross-plane lattice thermal conductivity of superlattices increases with the period length, while the in-plane phonon thermal conductivity first increases and then trends to convergence, resulting in the non-monotonic thermal anisotropy value. To further reveal the microscopic phonon transport mechanism, the interfacial phonon thermal resistance, density of states and spectral phonon transmission coefficient including anharmonic phonon properties under different period lengths are calculated. Our results can be helpful for understanding phonon transport in low-dimensional materials and provide guidance for optimizing the thermal conductivity anisotropy of superlattice materials in the application ranging from thermoelectric devices to thermal management in micro/nano systems.

Cite this article

WANG Xiuqi , AN Meng , MA Weigang , ZHANG Xing . Tunable Anisotropic Lattice Thermal Conductivity in One-Dimensional Superlattices from Molecular Dynamics Simulations#br#[J]. Journal of Thermal Science, 2022 , 31(4) : 1068 -1075 . DOI: 10.1007/s11630-022-1661-2

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