Related papers: Giant Anharmonic Phonon Scattering in PbTe
The microscopic physics behind low lattice thermal conductivity of single crystal rocksalt lead telluride (PbTe) is investigated. Mode-dependent phonon (normal and umklapp) scattering rates and their impact on thermal conductivity were…
The major obstacle in the design of materials with low lattice thermal conductivity is the difficulty in efficiently scattering phonons across the entire frequency spectrum. Using first principles calculations, we show that driving PbTe…
Due to the long range interaction in lead telluride (PbTe), the transverse optical (TO) phonon becomes soft around the Brillouin zone center. Previous studies have postulated that this zone-center softening causes the low thermal…
Lead chalcogenides such as PbS, PbSe, and PbTe are of interest for their exceptional thermoelectric properties and strongly anharmonic lattice dynamics. Although PbTe has received the most attention, PbSe has a lower thermal conductivity…
Low thermal conductivity is favorable for preserving the temperature gradient between the two ends of a thermoelectric material in order to ensure continuous electron current generation. In high-performance thermoelectric materials, there…
We investigate the harmonic and anharmonic contributions to the phonon spectrum of lead telluride, and perform a complete characterization of how the anharmonic effects dominate the phonons in PbTe as temperature increases. This effect is…
In this study, we systematically investigate the thermal and electronic transport properties of two-dimensional PbSe/PbTe monolayer heterostructure by combining first-principles calculations, Boltzmann transport theory, and machine learning…
The lattice thermal conductivity of the candidate thermoelectric material Mg$_3$Sb$_2$ is studied from first principles, with the inclusion of anharmonic, isotope, and boundary scattering processes, and via an accurate solution of the…
The binary compound SnSe exhibits record high thermoelectric performance, largely because of its very low thermal conductivity. The origin of the strong phonon anharmonicity leading to the low thermal conductivity of SnSe is investigated…
At room temperature, PbTe and SnTe are efficient thermoelectrics with a cubic structure. At low temperature, SnTe undergoes a ferroelectric transition with a critical temperature strongly dependent on the hole concentration, while PbTe is…
In the design of materials with low lattice thermal conductivity, compounds with high density, low speed of sound, and complexity at either the atomic, nano- or microstructural level are preferred. The layered compound Mg$_3$Sb$_2$ defies…
We explore a novel coupling mechanism of electrons with the transverse optical (TO) phonon branch in a regime when the TO mode becomes highly anharmonic and drives the ferroelectric phase transition. We show that this anharmonicity, which…
IV-VI materials are some of the most efficient bulk thermoelectric materials due to their proximity to soft-mode phase transitions, which leads to low lattice thermal conductivity. It has been shown that the lattice thermal conductivity of…
Anharmonic lattice vibrations govern the thermal dynamics in materials and present how the atoms interact and how they conduct heat. An indepth understanding of the microscopic mechanism of phonon anharmonicity in condensed systems is…
Peierls-Boltzmann transport equation, coupled with third-order anharmonic lattice dynamics calculations, has been widely used to model lattice thermal conductivity ($\kappa_{l}$) in bulk crystals. However, its application to materials with…
The anharmonic lattice dynamics of rock-salt thermoelectric compounds SnTe and PbTe are investigated with inelastic neutron scattering (INS) and first-principles calculations. The experiments show that, surprisingly, although SnTe is closer…
The interactions between electrons and phonons drive a large array of technologically relevant material properties including ferroelectricity, thermoelectricity, and phase-change behaviour. In the case of many group IV-VI, V, and related…
We investigate the ultrafast optical response of PbTe to an intense single-cycle terahertz pulse, resonant with the soft transverse optical (TO) phonon mode of the crystal. We detect multifrequency oscillations of the reflectance…
While the vibrational thermodynamics of materials with small anharmonicity at low temperatures has been understood well based on the harmonic phonons approximation; at high temperatures, this understanding must accommodate how phonons…
Dislocations can greatly enhance the figure of merit of thermoelectric materials by prominently reducing thermal conductivity. However, the evolution of phonon modes with different energies when they propagate through a single dislocation…