| About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2020 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
| Symposium
|
Thermal Transport in Crystalline and Non-crystalline Solids: Theory and Experiments
|
| Presentation Title |
Nonlinear Stopping of Phonons in Thermoelectric Crystal PbSe |
| Author(s) |
Michael E. Manley, Olle Hellman, Nina Shulumba, Andrew May, Paul Stonaha, Jeffrey Lynn, Vasile Garlea, Ahmet Alatas, Raphael Hermann, Hsin Wang, Brian Sales, Austin Minnich |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Michael E. Manley |
| Abstract Scope |
A strategy for improving thermoelectric efficiency is to reduce the transport of heat without disrupting electronic-transport. The conventional materials science approach of introducing defects or nanostructures to reduce transport of heat in a crystal lattice suffers because such structures also tend to disrupt electronic-transport. Combining inelastic neutron and x-ray scattering with ab initio simulations we identify a mechanism for halting vibrational energy in thermoelectric PbSe that occurs even in a perfect crystal. Intrinsic local modes in perfect crystals were known to occur from nonlinear physics, but here nonlinear localization of a large fraction of an entire phonon occurs - enough to alter the transport properties. Halting phonon propagation also comes with sharpening of the longitudinal acoustic mode due to a loss of phase space for scattering. Our results demonstrate how nonlinear physics beyond conventional perturbations can impact vibrational transport properties. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: Supplemental Proceedings volume |