2015/08/10 by Yanlei Wang, Wang, Yanlei, Zhigong Song +3
Engineering · Materials Science · #Advanced Thermoelectric Materials and Devices #FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Thermal Radiation and Cooling Technologies #Thermal properties of materials
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1508.02443
openalex publication_date 2015/08/10 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Thermal transport in solids changes its nature from phonon propagation that suffers from perturbative scattering to thermally activated hops between localized vibrational modes as the level of disorder increases. Models have been proposed to understand these two distinct extremes that predict opposite temperature dependence of the thermal conductivity, but not for the transition or the intermediate regime. Here we explore thermal transport in two-dimensional crystalline and amorphous silica with varying levels of disorder, α, by performing atomistic simulations as well as analysis based on the kinetic and Allen-Feldman theories. We demonstrate the crossover between the crystalline and amorphous regimes at α ~ 0.3, which can be identified by a turnover of the temperature dependence in thermal conductivity, and explained by the dominance of thermal hopping processes. The determination of this critical disorder level is also validated by the analysis of the participation ratio of localized vibrational modes, and the spatial localization of heat flux. These factors can serve as key indicators in characterizing the transition in heat transport mechanisms.