Theory of interface and anharmonic phonon interactions in nanocomposite materials

Abstract

We present a theory of phonon scattering rates resulting from mass smudging across interfaces and from anharmonicity in nanocomposite materials. We discuss the derivation of the anharmonic scattering term and present some recently published results indicating that if certain models of interface mass-mixing are adopted, the cross-planar thermal conductivity of an ultra-thin superlattice system will decrease dramatically with the number of bilayers n until n 4, above which value it begins to increase with n.