Roman Anufriev

Unlike classical heat diffusion at macroscale, nanoscale heat conduction can occur without energy dissipation because phonons can ballistically travel in straight lines for hundreds of nanometres. Nevertheless, despite recent experimental evidence of such ballistic phonon transport, control over its directionality, and thus its practical use, remains a challenge, as the directions of individual phonons are chaotic. Here, we show a method to control the directionality of ballistic phonon transpor

We investigate the impact of various phonon-scattering mechanisms on the in-plane thermal conductivity of suspended silicon thin films with two-dimensional periodic arrays of holes, i.e., phononic crystal (PnC) nanostructures. A large amount of data on the PnC structures with square, hexagonal, and honeycomb lattices reveals that the thermal conductivity is mostly determined by the surface-to-volume ratio. However, as the characteristic size of the structure is reduced down to several tens of na

Future of silicon-based microelectronics depends on solving the heat dissipation problem. A solution may lie in a nanoscale phenomenon known as ballistic heat conduction, which implies conduction of heat without heating the conductor. However, attempts to demonstrate this phenomenon experimentally are controversial and scarce, whereas its mechanism in confined nanostructures is yet to be fully understood. Here, we experimentally demonstrate quasi-ballistic heat conduction in silicon nanowires (N

In search of efficient thermoelectric nanostructures, many theoretical works predicted that nanopillars, placed on the surface of silicon membranes, nanobeams, or nanowires, can reduce the thermal conductivity of these nanostructures. To verify these predictions, we experimentally investigate heat conduction in suspended silicon nanobeams with periodic arrays of aluminium nanopillars. Our room temperature time-domain thermoreflectance experiments show that the nanobeams with nanopillars have 20%

Pillar-based phononic crystals belong to a class of acoustic metamaterials that can control heat conduction based on the design of the structure. In this work, we systematically investigate how various parameters of pillar-based phononic crystals affect thermal conductance at low temperatures. We find that the lowest thermal conductance is achieved when the pillars are short, have a large radius, a long period, and are made of materials with few local resonances, whereas pillars with many local

Manipulation of thermal fluxes is essential in today's science and technology. However, modern thermal phononics relies on the wave interference of phonons and thus is truly efficient either at sub-kelvin temperatures or atomic scales. We propose an alternative concept of heat manipulation based on the particle picture of phonons and their ballistic transport. We call this concept ray phononics as a thermal analogy of ray optics. Ray phononics is free from limitations of the traditional phononic

The impact of lattice type, period, porosity, and thickness of two-dimensional silicon phononic crystals on the reduction of thermal conductance by coherent modification of phonon dispersion is investigated using the theory of elasticity and the finite element method. Increases in the period and porosity of the phononic crystal affect the group velocity and phonon density of states and, as a consequence, reduce the in-plane thermal conductance of the structure as compared to the unpatterned memb

A theoretical study of coherent phonon scattering in thin-film phononic-crystal nanostructures (also called thermocrystals) is presented. It is commonly assumed that phononic crystals may only reduce thermal conductivity of materials. In this theoretical paper, contrary to this assumption, we demonstrate that phononic nanopatterning can enhance the thermal conductance of thin films under certain conditions. That is to say, it is shown that a thin membrane with many holes can have a higher therma

Knowledge of the phonon mean free path (MFP) holds the key to understanding the thermal properties of materials and nanostructures. Although several experiments measured the phonon MFP in bulk silicon, MFP spectra in thin membranes have not been directly measured experimentally yet. In this work, we experimentally probe the phonon MFP spectra in suspended silicon membranes. First, we measure the thermal conductivity of membranes with arrays of slits at different temperatures. Next, we develop a

Phononic crystals are the acoustic analogs of photonic crystals and aim at manipulating phonon transport using phonon interference in periodic structures. While such periodic structures are typically two-dimensional, many applications require one-dimensional (1D) wire-like or bulk structures instead. In this Research Update, we summarize the past decade of theoretical and experimental studies of coherent control of phonon and heat transport in one-dimensional phononic crystals. At the hypersonic

Phononic crystals have been studied for the past decades as a tool to control the propagation of acoustic and mechanical waves. Recently, researchers proposed that nanosized phononic crystals can also control heat conduction and improve the thermoelectric efficiency of silicon by phonon dispersion engineering. In this review, we focus on recent theoretical and experimental advances in phonon and thermal transport engineering using pillar-based phononic crystals. First, we explain the principles

Ballistic heat conduction in semiconductors is a remarkable but controversial nanoscale phenomenon, which implies that nanostructures can conduct thermal energy without dissipation. Here, we experimentally probed ballistic thermal transport at distances of 400-800 nm and temperatures of 4-250 K. Measuring thermal properties of straight and serpentine silicon nanowires, we found that at 4 K heat conduction is quasi-ballistic with stronger ballisticity at shorter length scales. As we increased the

Abstract Silicon carbide (SiC) aims to be the number one material for power microelectronics due to its remarkable thermal properties. Recent progress in SiC technology finally enabled the fabrication of crystalline SiC nanostructures. Yet, the thermal properties of SiC at the nanoscale remain overlooked. Here, we systematically study heat conduction in SiC nanostructures, including nanomembranes, nanowires, and phononic crystals. Our measurements show that the thermal conductivity of nanostruct

Artificial periodic nanostructures, known as phononic crystals, promise to control the thermal properties of nanostructures in the coherent regime, which can be achieved in semiconductors at low temperatures. Here, we study coherent thermal conduction in silicon nanowires with added periodic wings at sub-Kelvin temperature. Our simulations show that the added periodic wings flatten the phonon dispersion and thus reduce the thermal conductance. We investigate the dependence of this reduction on t

Heat conduction in superlattices demonstrates various atomic-scale effects, one of which is the ultra-low thermal conductivity. Remarkably, theoretical works even promise sub-amorphous thermal conductivity in superlattices made of amorphous materials. Yet, these predictions were not tested experimentally. Here, we experimentally study the cross-plane thermal transport in amorphous Si/SiO2 superlattices at room temperature. Using the micro time-domain thermoreflectance technique, we measured the