Phosphorene grain boundary effect on phonon transport and phononic applications

Grain boundaries (GBs) widely exist in black phosphorene (BP), which plays a vital role in determining the properties of 2D materials. Significant GB effect on the thermal boundary resistance in BP structures is found by using molecular dynamics calculations and lattice dynamic analysis. A remarkably high interface thermal resistance is observed. By analyzing the strain distribution and phonon vibrational spectra, we reveal this high thermal resistance originates from phonon localization and strong phonon boundary scattering induced by the local stress at the GB area. Particularly, it is interesting to find that the partial phonon modes display weak localization when GBs present. The fraction of atoms participating in a particular phonon vibrational mode has been quantified through the calculation of phonon participation ratio. In addition, the thermal boundary resistance is found size-dependent, which further induces interesting thermal rectification effect in the BP structures. A high rectification ratio is obtained by adjusting the structural length and temperature bias. These findings provide a through insight into the GB effects on individual phonon mode transmission across the GBs, and highlight that the GB effect is an important factor and should be taken into account for the applications of BP-based phononic devices.