Results of in-plane and out-of-plane thermal conductivity measurements on La1.8−xEu0.2SrxCuO4 (0≤x≤0.2) single crystals are presented. The most characteristic features of the temperature dependence are a pronounced phonon peak at low temperatures and a steplike anomaly at TLT, i.e., at the transition to the low temperature tetragonal phase (LTT-phase), which gradually decrease with increasing Sr-content. Comparison of these findings with the thermal conductivity of La2−xSrxCuO4 and La2NiO4 clearly reveals that in La2−xSrxCuO4 the most effective mechanism for phonon scattering is impurity-scattering (dopants), as well as scattering by soft phonons that are associated with the lattice instability in the low temperature orthorhombic phase (LTO-phase). There is no evidence that stripe correlations play a major role in suppressing the phonon peak in the thermal conductivity of La2−xSrxCuO4.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0305321,
title = {Phonon thermal conductivity in doped $\rm\bf La_2CuO_4$: Relevant scattering mechanisms},
author = {C. Hess and B. Büchner and U. Ammerahl and A. Revcolevschi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0305321},
year = {2016}
}