III. Second sound and the thermo-mechanical effect at very low temperatures

Strain-Driven High Thermal Conductivity in Hexagonal Boron Phosphide Monolayer

Two-dimensional graphenelike material, hexagonal boron phosphide (h-BP), is a promising candidate for electronic and optoelectronic devices because of its suitable band gap and high carrier mobility. Especially from the ultrahigh lattice thermal conductivity (κl), it exhibits great potential to solve the challenges of future thermal management applications. Here, the excellent lattice thermal transport properties of the h-BP monolayer are systematically analyzed at the atomic level based on the first-principles method. The results show that the ultrahigh κl value of the h-BP monolayer is attributed to its high phonon group velocity and long phonon lifetime and the strong phonon hydrodynamic effect. We further explore the influence of the tensile strain on the thermal transport properties of the h-BP monolayer. As the strain increases from 0 to 8%, the κl value shows a trend of first increasing and then decreasing due to the coeffect of strain-driven changes for phonon harmonicity and anharmonicity. Under a strain of 6%, the κl value of the h-BP monolayer is as high as 795 W/mK at 300 K, which is about 2.22 times larger than that of 357 W/mK without strain. Such a significant increase in the κl value is mainly due to the increased phonon group velocity and decreased Grüneisen parameter caused by strain. This work is helpful to understand the critical role of tensile strain in lattice thermal transport of two-dimensional graphenelike materials. It is conducive to promoting the thermal management application of the h-BP monolayer.

Phonon hydrodynamics in crystalline materials

Phonon hydrodynamics is an exotic phonon transport phenomenon that challenges the conventional understanding of diffusive phonon scattering in crystalline solids. It features a peculiar collective motion of phonons with various unconventional properties resembling fluid hydrodynamics, facilitating non Fourier heat transport. Hence, it opens up several new avenues to enrich the knowledge and implementations on phonon physics, phonon engineering, and micro and nanoelectronic device technologies. This review aims at covering a comprehensive development as well as the recent advancements in this field via experiments, analytical methods, and state-of-the-art numerical techniques. The evolution of the topic has been realized using both phenomenological and material science perspectives. Further, the discussions related to the factors that influence such peculiar motion, illustrate the capability of phonon hydrodynamics to be implemented in various applications. A plethora of new ideas can emerge from the topic considering both the physics and the material science axes, navigating toward a promising outlook in the research areas around phonon transport in non-metallic solids.

Thermal oscillations, second sound and thermal resonance in phonon hydrodynamics

Recent observation of second sound in graphite at a temperature above 100 K has aroused a great interest in the study of thermal waves in non-metallic solid materials. In this article, based on the Guyer–Krumhansl model, we investigate the second sound and thermal resonance phenomena in phonon hydrodynamics. The occurrence condition for the second sound is derived. It shows that the smaller the relaxation time of N-scattering of the non-metallic solid with a large relaxation time of R-scattering, the more likely the second sound will occur. For the phonon transport in the non-metallic solid excited by an oscillatory heat source with a single frequency, the occurrence condition for thermal resonance and a formula for calculating the external heat source frequency at resonance are also derived. It is found that the low-dimensional materials with small size are prone to the occurrence of second sound and thermal resonance. These phenomena open up new avenues for thermal management and energy conversion.

Phonon Hydrodynamic Heat Conduction and Knudsen Minimum in Graphite

In the hydrodynamic regime, phonons drift with a nonzero collective velocity under a temperature gradient, reminiscent of viscous gas and fluid flow. The study of hydrodynamic phonon transport has spanned over half a century but has been mostly limited to cryogenic temperatures (∼1 K) and more recently to low-dimensional materials. Here, we identify graphite as a three-dimensional material that supports phonon hydrodynamics at significantly higher temperatures (∼100 K) based on first-principles calculations. In particular, by solving the Boltzmann equation for phonon transport in graphite ribbons, we predict that phonon Poiseuille flow and Knudsen minimum can be experimentally observed above liquid nitrogen temperature. Further, we reveal the microscopic origin of these intriguing phenomena in terms of the dependence of the effective boundary scattering rate on momentum-conserving phonon-phonon scattering processes and the collective motion of phonons. The significant hydrodynamic nature of phonon transport in graphite is attributed to its strong intralayer sp² hybrid bonding and weak van der Waals interlayer interactions. More intriguingly, the reflection symmetry associated with a single graphene layer is broken in graphite, which opens up more momentum-conserving phonon-phonon scattering channels and results in stronger hydrodynamic features in graphite than graphene. As a boundary-sensitive transport regime, phonon hydrodynamics opens up new possibilities for thermal management and energy conversion.

The thermal conductivity of solid helium

The thermal conductivities of crystals of solid helium at densities between 0⋅194 and 0⋅218 g/cm 3 have been measured at liquid-helium temperatures. In order to interpret the results, the specific heat of solid helium at these densities has been measured from 0⋅6 to 1⋅4° K. The range of densities employed is sufficient to allow the observation of Debye characteristic temperatures varying by 40 %, and of thermal conductivities varying by factors of over 10. It is shown that the conductivity measurements are in accord with the ‘umklapp’ type of thermal resistance derived by Peierls (1929, 1935). Further work was restricted by the difficulty of obtaining good single crystals in narrow tubes, but measurements of the conductivity at one density were obtained down to 0⋅3° K. In this region the conductivity is limited by boundary scattering and is higher than that observed by other authors for liquid helium II at similar temperatures.