Ballistic thermal conductance limited by phonon roughness scattering: A comparison of power-law and Gaussian roughness

Abstract

In this work, we have investigated the influence of power-law roughness on the ballistic thermal conductance KTH for a nanosized beam adiabatically connected between two heat reservoirs. The sideways wall beam roughness is assumed to be power-law type, which is described by the roughness amplitude w, the in-plane roughness correlation length ξ and the roughness exponent 0≤H≤1. Distinct differences occur in between power-law and Gaussian wall roughness. For power-law roughness with low roughness exponents H (<0.5), the influence of phonon scattering can be rather destructive leading to significant deviations from the universal conductance value for flat beam walls. On the other hand for large roughness exponents (H>0.5) the conductance drop is significantly smaller than that of Gaussian roughness assuming similar roughness ratios w/ξ.