Ab Initio Green-Kubo Approach for the Thermal Conductivity of Solids

Christian Carbogno, Rampi Ramprasad, Matthias Scheffler
2017 Physical Review Letters  
We herein present a first-principles formulation of the Green-Kubo method that allows the accurate assessment of the non-radiative thermal conductivity of solid semiconductors and insulators in equilibrium ab initio molecular dynamics calculations. Using the virial for the nuclei, we propose a unique ab initio definition of the heat flux. Accurate size- and time convergence are achieved within moderate computational effort by a robust, asymptotically exact extrapolation scheme. We demonstrate
more » ... e capabilities of the technique by investigating the thermal conductivity of extreme high and low heat conducting materials, namely diamond Si and tetragonal ZrO_2.
doi:10.1103/physrevlett.118.175901 pmid:28498695 fatcat:6gf764jwdjhs5anix7cg45tgza