Thermal conductivity modeling of core-shell and tubular nanowires

The heteroepitaxial growth of crystalline core-shell nanostructures of a variety of materials has become possible in recent years, allowing the realization of various novel nanoscale electronic and optoelectronic devices. The increased surface or interface area will decrease the thermal conductivity of such nanostructures and impose challenges for the thermal management of such devices. In the meantime, the decreased thermal conductivity might benefit the thermoelectric conversion efficiency. In this paper, we present modeling results on the lattice thermal conductivity of core-shell and tubular nanowires along the wire axis direction using the phonon Boltzmann equation. We report the dependence of the thermal conductivity on the surface conditions and the core-shell geometry for silicon core-germanium shell and tubular silicon nanowires at room temperature. The results show that the effective thermal conductivity changes not only with the composition of the constituents but also with the radius of the nanowires and nanopores due to the nature of the ballistic phonon transport. The results in this work have implications for the design and operation of a variety of nanoelectronic devices, optoelectronic devices, and thermoelectric materials and devices.