Unusual high thermal conductivity in boron arsenide bulk crystals

Fei Tian; Bai Song; Xi Chen; Navaneetha K Ravichandran; Yinchuan Lv; Ke Chen; Sean Sullivan; Jaehyun Kim; Yuanyuan Zhou; Te-Huan Liu; Miguel Goni; Zhiwei Ding; Jingying Sun; Geethal Amila Gamage Udalamatta Gamage; Haoran Sun; Hamidreza Ziyaee; Shuyuan Huyan; Liangzi Deng; Jianshi Zhou; Aaron J Schmidt; Shuo Chen; Ching-Wu Chu; Pinshane Y Huang; David Broido; Li Shi; Gang Chen; Zhifeng Ren

doi:10.1126/science.aat7932

Unusual high thermal conductivity in boron arsenide bulk crystals

Science. 2018 Aug 10;361(6402):582-585. doi: 10.1126/science.aat7932. Epub 2018 Jul 5.

Authors

Fei Tian¹, Bai Song², Xi Chen³, Navaneetha K Ravichandran⁴, Yinchuan Lv⁵, Ke Chen², Sean Sullivan³, Jaehyun Kim⁶, Yuanyuan Zhou⁶, Te-Huan Liu², Miguel Goni⁷, Zhiwei Ding², Jingying Sun¹, Geethal Amila Gamage Udalamatta Gamage¹, Haoran Sun¹, Hamidreza Ziyaee⁸, Shuyuan Huyan¹, Liangzi Deng¹, Jianshi Zhou^{3

6}, Aaron J Schmidt⁷, Shuo Chen¹, Ching-Wu Chu^{1

9}, Pinshane Y Huang¹⁰, David Broido¹¹, Li Shi^{12

6}, Gang Chen¹³, Zhifeng Ren¹⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics and Texas Center for Superconductivity, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204, USA.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
³ Materials Science and Engineering Program, Texas Materials Institute, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
⁴ Department of Physics, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA.
⁵ Department of Physics, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
⁶ Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
⁷ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
⁸ Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204, USA.
⁹ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
¹¹ Department of Physics, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA. david.broido@bc.edu lishi@mail.utexas.edu gchen2@mit.edu zren@uh.edu.
¹² Materials Science and Engineering Program, Texas Materials Institute, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA. david.broido@bc.edu lishi@mail.utexas.edu gchen2@mit.edu zren@uh.edu.
¹³ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. david.broido@bc.edu lishi@mail.utexas.edu gchen2@mit.edu zren@uh.edu.
¹⁴ Department of Physics and Texas Center for Superconductivity, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204, USA. david.broido@bc.edu lishi@mail.utexas.edu gchen2@mit.edu zren@uh.edu.

PMID: 29976797
DOI: 10.1126/science.aat7932

Abstract

Conventional theory predicts that ultrahigh lattice thermal conductivity can only occur in crystals composed of strongly bonded light elements, and that it is limited by anharmonic three-phonon processes. We report experimental evidence that departs from these long-held criteria. We measured a local room-temperature thermal conductivity exceeding 1000 watts per meter-kelvin and an average bulk value reaching 900 watts per meter-kelvin in bulk boron arsenide (BAs) crystals, where boron and arsenic are light and heavy elements, respectively. The high values are consistent with a proposal for phonon-band engineering and can only be explained by higher-order phonon processes. These findings yield insight into the physics of heat conduction in solids and show BAs to be the only known semiconductor with ultrahigh thermal conductivity.

Publication types

Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.