Phonon transport in amorphous carbon using Green-Kubo modal analysis

W Lv and A Henry, APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS, 108, 181905 (2016).

DOI: 10.1063/1.4948605

Amorphous carbon (a-C) is an important material often used in microelectronics. Using a recently developed approach, termed Green-Kubo modal analysis, we were able to calculate the thermal conductivity of a-C, which yielded excellent agreement with experiments, by employing a simple correction to the specific heat. The results show that the heat capacity substantially limits the thermal conductivity of a-C at room temperature and it is dominated by contributions from diffusons between 10 and 40 THz. Furthermore, the phonon relaxation times in a-C do not vary significantly with increasing temperature, which is quite unusual by comparison with the behavior observed for other materials. Published by AIP Publishing.

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