Ab initio study of mode-resolved phonon transmission at Si/Ge interfaces using atomistic Green's functions

Abstract

Solid interfaces with exceptionally low or high thermal conductance are of intense scientific and practical interest. However, realizing such interfaces is challenging due to a lack of knowledge of the phonon transmission coefficients between specific modes on each side of the interface and how the coefficients are affected by atomic scale structure. Here, we report an ab initio based study of phonon transmission at Si/Ge interfaces using a recent extension of the atomistic Green's function method that resolves transmission coefficients by mode. These results provide a detailed framework to investigate the precise transmission and reflection processes that lead to thermal resistance and how they depend on phonon frequency as well as incident angle. We find that the transmission and reflection processes can be partly explained with familiar concepts such as conservation of transverse momentum, but we also find that numerous phonons have zero transmission coefficient despite the existence of modes that satisfy transverse momentum conservation. This work provides detailed insights into precisely which phonons transmit or reflect at interfaces, knowledge necessary to design solid interfaces with extreme values of thermal conductance for thermoelectricity and heat management applications.