Advanced materials with extreme thermal conductivity are critically important for various technological applications including energy conversion, storage, and thermal management. High thermal conductivity is desirable for efficient heat spreading in electronics, and low thermal conductivity is needed for thermal insulation and thermoelectric energy harvesting. However, practical application deployments are usually limited by the materials availability and understanding the fundamental origins for extreme thermal conductivity remains challenging. My PhD research focuses on applying and developing first-principles computations to understand the microscopic thermal transport mechanisms of the emerging materials and to discover new materials with ultrahigh and ultralow thermal conductivity. My dissertation is composed of three themes. The first theme is focused on understanding the fundamental origins and transport mechanisms for a group of high thermal conductivity semiconductors that were discovered recently by our group. In particular, boron phosphide (BP) and boron arsenide (BAs) crystals have been synthesized and measured with thermal conductivities of 460 and 1300 W/mK respectively, representing the best thermal conductor among common bulk metals and semiconductors. I have conducted ab initio calculations based on density functional theory to investigate phonon anharmonicity, size-dependent transport from diffusive to ballistic regime, as well as the effect from defect scattering. Our study shows that, unlike the commonly accepted rule for most materials near room temperature, high-order anharmonicity through the four-phonon process is significant in BA because of its unique band structure. In addition, I have performed multiscale Monte Carlo simulations to solve phonon Boltzmann transport equations to compute heat dissipation in three-dimensional practical measurement samples and electronic devices, which quantitively determines temperature distributed resulted by non-equilibrium phonon transport and underscores the promise of our developed BP and BAs for the next generation of thermal management technologies. The second theme of my thesis is to theoretical search for new ultra-high thermal conductivity materials, with the aim to push the limit of existing materials database. We have calculated the thermal conductivity of several B-C-X ternary compounds and found the R3m-BNC2 has ultrahigh thermal conductivity at ~2200 W/mK, which is comparable with the existing highest thermal conductivity materials, diamond. We also calculate the thermal conductivity of single-layer boron compounds in III-V group, and find high thermal conductivity of single-layer h-BAs at around 400 W/K. My computational studies enable atomistic understanding through their phonon band structures, scattering spaces, lifetimes, etc. The third theme of my thesis is to investigate phonon transport in ultralow thermal conductivity materials with a focus on tin selenide (SnSe). SnSe is a recently discovered high performance thermoelectric material, but its intrinsic low thermal conductivity remains debating in recent literature. In collaboration with my labmates, we combine phonon theory and experiments to investigate phonon softening physics. In particular, my calculated phonon frequencies of SnSe under varying temperatures indicate strong phonon renormalization due to higher-order anharmonicity. The comparison of my theory results with experiments indicates that the widely used harmonic model fails to descript the phonon renormalization and thus thermal conductivity of SnSe. Instead, I have developed self-consistent phonon theory to capture the higher order interactions and provided very good agreement with the experimentally measured ultralow thermal conductivity and thermophysical properties of SnSe.

The main objective of this thesis is to study phonon thermal transport in two-dimensional (2D) materials using first-principles density functional theory (DFT) calculations and the full solution of the Boltzmann transport equation (BTE). A wide range of 2D materials including graphene, 2D structures of group-VA, and recently emerged NX (X=P, As, Sb) compound monolayers are considered. Special attention is given to a mode-by-mode study of the thermal tunability via strain and functionalization. First, this thesis investigated the sensitivity of the DFT-calculated intrinsic thermal conductivity and phonon properties of 2D materials to the choice of exchange-correlation (XC) and pseudopotential (PP). It was found that the choice of the XC-PP combination results in significant discrepancies among predicted thermal conductivities of graphene at room temperature, in the range of 5442-8677 Wm^(-1)K^(-1). The LDA-NC and PBE-PAW combinations predicted the thermal conductivities in best agreement with available experimental data. This sensitivity analysis was an essential first step towards using DFT to engineer the phonon thermal transport in 2D systems. Next, DFT was used to systematically investigate the strain-dependent lattice thermal conductivity of -arsenene and -phosphorene, 2D monolayers of group-VA. The results showed that the thermal conductivity in both monolayers exhibits an up-and-down behavior when biaxial tensile strain is applied in the range from 0% to 9%. An interplay between phonon group velocities, heat capacities, and relaxation times, is found to be responsible for this behaviour. Finally, this project investigated the thermal conductivity of nitrogen functionalized - NX (X=P, As, Sb) monolayers. The results showed that the room-temperature thermal conductivities of -NP, -NAs, and -NSb are about 1.1, 5.5, and 34.0 times higher than those of their single-element -P, -As, and -Sb monolayers, respectively. The phonon transport analysis revealed that higher phonon group velocities, as well as higher phonon lifetimes were responsible for such an enhancement in the thermal conductivities of - NX compounds compared to single-element group-VA monolayers. Also, it was found that -NP has the minimum thermal conductivity among -NX monolayers, while it has the minimum average atomic mass. This thesis provides valuable insight into phonon physics and thermal transport in novel 2D materials using advanced DFT calculations.

Advanced materials with extreme thermal conductivity are critically important for various technological applications including energy conversion, storage, and thermal management. Low thermal conductivity is needed for thermal insulation and thermoelectric energy harvesting, while high thermal conductivity is desirable for efficient heat spreading in electronics. However, practical application deployments are usually limited by the materials availability in nature. Moreover, understanding the fundamental origins for extreme thermal conductivity still remains challenging. My PhD research focuses on finding new thermal materials and unveiling fundamental phonon transport mechanisms in extreme thermal conductivity matters to push the frontier of thermal science. My dissertation is composed of three topics. The first topic is focused on developing and investigating a new group of ultrahigh conductivity materials. High-quality boron phosphide (BP) and boron arsenide (BAs) crystal are synthesized and measured with thermal conductivities of 460 and 1300 W/mK, respectively. In particular, our result shows that BAs is the best thermal conductor among common bulk metals and semiconductors. To better understand the fundamental origin of such an ultrahigh thermal conductivity, advanced phonon spectroscopy and temperature dependent characterizations are performed. Our measurements, in conjunction with atomistic theory, reveal that, unlike the commonly accepted rule for most materials near room temperature, high-order anharmonicity through the four-phonon process is significant in BA because of its unique band structure. Our result underscores the promise of using BP and BAs for thermal management and develops microscopic understanding of the phonon transport mechanisms. The second topic of my thesis is to investigate phonon transport in ultralow thermal conductivity material with a focus on tin selenide (SnSe). SnSe is a recently discovered material for high performance thermoelectricity. However, the thermal properties of intrinsic SnSe remain elusive in literature. To understand the dominant phonon transport mechanisms for the extremely low thermal conductivity of SnSe, temperature-dependent sound velocity, lattice expansion, and Gr neisen parameter was measured. The measurement result shows that high-order anharmonicity introduces strong phonon renormalization and the ultralow thermal conductivity. The third topic of the thesis is to investigate in-situ dynamic tuning of thermal conductivity in layered materials. A novel device platform based on lithium ion battery is developed to characterize the interactions between ions and phonons of layered materials. We observe a highly reversible modulation and anisotropy of thermal conductivity from phonon scattering introduced by ionic intercalation in the interspacing layers. This study provides a unique approach to explore the fundamental energy transport involving lattices and ions and open up new opportunities in thermal engineering.

The monograph is devoted to the investigation of physical processes that govern the phonon transport in bulk and nanoscale single-crystal samples of cubic symmetry. Special emphasis is given to the study of phonon focusing in cubic crystals and its influence on the boundary scattering and lattice thermal conductivity of bulk materials and nanostructures.

This book provides an overview on nanostructured thermoelectric materials and devices, covering fundamental concepts, synthesis techniques, device contacts and stability, and potential applications, especially in waste heat recovery and solar energy conversion. The contents focus on thermoelectric devices made from nanomaterials with high thermoelectric efficiency for use in large scale to generate megawatts electricity. Covers the latest discoveries, methods, technologies in materials, contacts, modules, and systems for thermoelectricity. Addresses practical details of how to improve the efficiency and power output of a generator by optimizing contacts and electrical conductivity. Gives tips on how to realize a realistic and usable device or module with attention to large scale industry synthesis and product development. Prof. Zhifeng Ren is M. D. Anderson Professor in the Department of Physics and the Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston. Prof. Yucheng Lan is an associate professor in Morgan State University. Prof. Qinyong Zhang is a professor in the Center for Advanced Materials and Energy at Xihua University of China.

A typical electronic or photonic device may consist of several materials each one potentially meeting at an interface or terminating with a free-surface boundary. As modern device dimensions reach deeper into the nanoscale regime, interfaces and boundaries become increasingly influential to both electrical and thermal energy transport. While a large majority of the device community focuses on the former, we focus here on the latter issue of thermal transport which is of great importance in implementing nanoscale devices as well as developing solutions for on-chip heat removal and waste heat scavenging. In this document we will discuss how modern performance enhancing techniques (strain, nanostructuring, alloying, etc.) affect thermal transport at boundaries and across interfaces through the avenue of three case studies. We use first-principles Density Functional Perturbation Theory to obtain the phonon spectrum of the materials of interest and then use the dispersion data as input to a phonon Boltzmann Transport model. First, we investigate the combined effects of strain and boundary scattering on the in-plane and cross-plane thermal conductivity of thin-film silicon and germanium. Second, we review a recently developed model for cross-dimensional (2D-3D) phonon transport and apply it to 3D-2D-3D stacked interfaces involving graphene and molybdenum disulfide 2D-layers. Third, we combine relevant models from earlier Chapters to study extrinsic effects, such as line edge roughness and substrate effects, on in-plane and through-plane thermal transport in 1H-phase transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) alloys. Through these investigations we show that: (1) biaxial strain in Si and Ge thin-films can modulate cross-plane conductivity due to strong boundary scattering, (2) the thermal boundary conductance between 2D-3D materials can be enhanced in the presence of an encapsulating layer, and (3) the thermal conductivity of 1H-phase TMDs can be reduced by an order of magnitude through the combination of nanostructuring, alloying, and substrate effects.