Anharmonic Properties in Mg₂X (X= C, Si, Ge, Sn, Pb) from First-Principles Calculations

Thermal conductivity reduction is one of the potential routes to improve the performance of thermoelectric materials. However, detailed understanding of the thermal transport of many promising materials is still missing. In this paper, we employ electronic-structure calculations at the level of density functional theory to elucidate thermal transport properties of the Mg2X (X=C, Si, Ge, Sn, and Pb) family of compounds, which includes Mg2Si, a material already identified as a potential thermoelectric. All these materials crystallize into the same antifluorite structure. Systematic trends in the anharmonic properties of these materials are presented and examined. Our calculations indicate that the reduction in the group velocity is the main driver of the thermal conductivity trend in these materials, as the phonon lifetimes in these compounds are very similar. We also examine the limits of the applicability of perturbation theory to study the effect of point defects on thermal transport and find that it is in good agreement with experiment in a wide range of scattering parameter values. The thermal conductivity of the recently synthesized Mg2C is computed and predicted to be 34 W/mK at 300°C

Evaluation of Computational Techniques for Solving the Boltzmann Transport Equation for Lattice Thermal Conductivity Calculations

Three methods for computing thermal conductivity from lattice dynamics (the iterative method, the variational method, and the relaxation-time approximation) are compared for the prototypical case of solid argon. The iterative method is found to produce results in close agreement with Green-Kubo molecular-dynamics simulations, a formally correct method for computing thermal conductivity. The variational method and relaxation-time approximation are found to underestimate the thermal conductivity. The relationship among the methods is established; a combination of the iterative and variational methods is found to have a fastest convergence. Formal convergence of the iterative method is demonstrated and a simple mixing rule is shown to provide stability in practice. The ability to use these methods to provide detailed insight into the relationship between phonon properties and thermal conductivity is demonstrated

Effect of Interfacial Atomic Mixing on the Thermal Conductivity of Multi-Layered Stacking Structure

Multi-layered stacking structures and atomic mixing interfaces were constructed. The effects of various factors on the thermal conductivity of different lattice structures were studied by non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, including the number of atomic mixing layers, temperature, total length of the system, and period length. The results showed that the mixing of two and four layers of atoms can improve the thermal conductivities of the multi-layer structure with a small total length due to a phonon bridge mechanism. When the total length of the system is large, the thermal conductivity of the multi-layer structure with atomic mixing interfaces decreases significantly compared with that of the perfect interfaces. The interfacial atom mixing destroys the phonon coherent transport in the multi-layer structure and decreases the thermal conductivity to some extent. The thermal conductivity of the multi-layer structure with perfect interfaces is significantly affected by temperature, whereas the thermal conductivity of the multi-layer structures with atomic mixing is less sensitive to temperature

The Conundrum of Relaxation Volumes in First-Principles Calculations of Charged Defects in UO₂

The defect relaxation volumes obtained from density-functional theory (DFT) calculations of charged vacancies and interstitials are much larger than their neutral counterparts, seemingly unphysically large. We focus on UO2 as our primary material of interest, but also consider Si and GaAs to reveal the generality of our results. In this work, we investigate the possible reasons for this and revisit the methods that address the calculation of charged defects in periodic DFT. We probe the dependence of the proposed energy corrections to charged defect formation energies on relaxation volumes and find that corrections such as potential alignment remain ambiguous with regards to its contribution to the charged defect relaxation volume. We also investigate the volume for the net neutral defect reactions comprising individual charged defects, and find that the aggregate formation volumes have reasonable magnitudes. This work highlights the issue that, as is well-known for defect formation energies, the defect formation volumes depend on the choice of reservoir. We show that considering the change in volume of the electron reservoir in the formation reaction of the charged defects, analogous to how volumes of atoms are accounted for in defect formation volumes, can renormalize the formation volumes of charged defects such that they are comparable to neutral defects. This approach enables the description of the elastic properties of isolated charged defects within an overall neutral material

Spin-System Radio-Frequency Superradiation: A Phenomenological Study and Comparison with Numeric Simulations

We discuss the coherent behavior of a polarized, nuclear or electron, spin system for which the magnetic dipole radiation emitted in the radio-frequency region, has approximately quadratic dependence on the number of spins. An effective method of describing these phenomena is provided by computer simulation of a microscopic model of the spin system. Important aspects of this numeric simulation are described, together with a comparison with the theoretical predictions. The behavior of the transverse component of the magnetic moment, M+ (t), in super-radiant conditions is studied. In addition, the role of dipole-dipole interactions in super-radiation phenomena is investigated in detail. It is shown that some important features of super-radiation cannot be described with the Bloch equations

Kapitza Resistance of Si/SiO₂ Interface

A phonon wave packet dynamics method is used to characterize the Kapitza resistance of a Si/SiO2 interface in a Si/SiO2/Si heterostructure. By varying the thickness of SiO2 layer sandwiched between two Si layers, we determine the Kapitza resistance for the Si/SiO 2 interface from both wave packet dynamics and a direct, non-equilibrium molecular dynamics approach. The good agreement between the two methods indicates that they have each captured the anharmonic phonon scatterings at the interface. Moreover, detailed analysis provides insights as to how individual phonon mode scatters at the interface and their contribution to the Kapitza resistance

Phonon Density of States and Anharmonicity of UO2

Phonon density of states (PDOS) measurements have been performed on polycrystalline UO2 at 295 and 1200 K using time-of-flight inelastic neutron scattering to investigate the impact of anharmonicity on the vibrational spectra and to benchmark ab initio PDOS simulations performed on this strongly correlated Mott-insulator. Time-of-flight PDOS measurements include anharmonic linewidth broadening inherently and the factor of ~ 7 enhancement of the oxygen spectrum relative to the uranium component by the neutron weighting increases sensitivity to the oxygen-dominated optical phonon modes. The first-principles simulations of quasi-harmonic PDOS spectra were neutron-weighted and anharmonicity was introduced in an approximate way by convolution with wavevector-weighted averages over our previously measured phonon linewidths for UO2 that are provided in numerical form. Comparisons between the PDOS measurements and the simulations show reasonable agreement overall, but they also reveal important areas of disagreement for both high and low temperatures. The discrepancies stem largely from an ~ 10 meV compression in the overall bandwidth (energy range) of the oxygen-dominated optical phonons in the simulations. A similar linewidth-convoluted comparison performed with the PDOS spectrum of Dolling et al. obtained by shell-model fitting to their historical phonon dispersion measurements shows excellent agreement with the time-of-flight PDOS measurements reported here. In contrast, we show by comparisons of spectra in linewidth-convoluted form that recent first-principles simulations for UO2 fail to account for the PDOS spectrum determined from the measurements of Dolling et al. These results demonstrate PDOS measurements to be stringent tests for ab initio simulations of phonon physics in UO2 and they indicate further the need for advances in theory to address lattice dynamics of UO2.Comment: Text slightly modified, results unchange

Phonon Thermal Transport Through Tilt Grain Boundaries in Strontium Titanate

In this work, we perform nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations to study phonon scattering at two tilt grain boundaries (GBs) in SrTiO3. Mode-wise energy transmission coefficients are obtained based on phonon wave-packet dynamics simulations. The Kapitza conductance is then quantified using a lattice dynamics approach. The obtained results of the Kapitza conductance of both GBs compare well with those obtained by the direct method, except for the temperature dependence. Contrary to common belief, the results of this work show that the optical modes in SrTiO3 contribute significantly to phonon thermal transport, accounting for over 50% of the Kapitza conductance. To understand the effect of the GB structural disorder on phonon transport, we compare the local phonon density of states of the atoms in the GB region with that in the single crystalline grain region. Our results show that the excess vibrational modes introduced by the structural disorder do not have a significant effect on phonon scattering at the GBs, but the absence of certain modes in the GB region appears to be responsible for phonon reflections at GBs. This work has also demonstrated phonon mode conversion and simultaneous generation of new modes. Some of the new modes have the same frequency as the initial wave packet, while some have the same wave vector but lower frequencies

How are the energy waves blocked on the way from hot to cold?

Representing the Center for Materials Science of Nuclear Fuel (CMSNF), this document is one of the entries in the Ten Hundred and One Word Challenge. As part of the challenge, the 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers were invited to represent their science in images, cartoons, photos, words and original paintings, but any descriptions or words could only use the 1000 most commonly used words in the English language, with the addition of one word important to each of the EFRCs and the mission of DOE energy. The mission of CMSNF to develop an experimentally validated multi-scale computational capability for the predictive understanding of the impact of microstructure on thermal transport in nuclear fuel under irradiation, with ultimate application to UO2 as a model syste