Part-crystalline part-liquid state and rattling-like thermal damping in materials with chemical-bond hierarchy.

ABSTRACT: Understanding thermal and phonon transport in solids has been of great importance in many disciplines such as thermoelectric materials, which usually requires an extremely low lattice thermal conductivity (LTC). By analyzing the finite-temperature structural and vibrational characteristics of typical thermoelectric compounds such as filled skutterudites and Cu3SbSe3, we demonstrate a concept of part-crystalline part-liquid state in the compounds with chemical-bond hierarchy, in which certain constituent species weakly bond to other part of the crystal. Such a material could intrinsically manifest the coexistence of rigid crystalline sublattices and other fluctuating noncrystalline sublattices with thermally induced large-amplitude vibrations and even flow of the group of species atoms, lea

SUBMITTER: Qiu W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4210332 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature