Toward phonon-boundary engineering in nanoporous materials

Giuseppe Romano, Jeffrey C. Grossman
2014 Applied Physics Letters  
Tuning thermal transport in nanostructured materials is a powerful approach to develop high-efficiency thermoelectric materials. Using a recently developed approach based on the phonon mean free path dependent Boltzmann transport equation, we compute the effective thermal conductivity of nanoporous materials with pores of various shapes and arrangements. We assess the importance of pore-pore distance in suppressing thermal transport, and identify the pore arrangement that minimizes the thermal
more » ... onductivity, composed of a periodic arrangement of two misaligned rows of triangular pores. Such a configuration yields a reduction in the thermal conductivity of more than 60 % with respect the simple circular aligned case with the same porosity.
doi:10.1063/1.4891362 fatcat:hf35dp2cubguhfagcjqpeisdtq