Elsevier

Physics Letters A

Volume 413, 18 October 2021, 127590
Physics Letters A

Thermal resistance and thermal rectification of silicon device with triangular pores: A molecular dynamics study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physleta.2021.127590Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Thermal resistance in silicon device with triangular pores is investigated.

  • The thermal rectification phenomenon is detected in this asymmetric silicon device.

  • The thermal rectification can be tuned through the angles and the distribution of triangular pores.

  • The thermal rectification ratio can be controlled to vary in a large range.

Abstract

The thermal rectification has potential applications in the thermal management and thermal signal processing. By using the nonequilibrium molecular dynamics method, the thermal resistance of triangular pores in the silicon device is analyzed. The evident thermal rectification phenomenon has been detected in silicon device with triangular pores. It is found that the thermal rectification can be tuned through the angles and the distribution of pores. A moderate angle and pattered arrangement of triangular pores are preferable to achieve a higher thermal rectification ratio. The simulated thermal resistance caused by pores is on the order of 1010m2K/W and the thermal rectification ratio can be up to 29.6%. Moreover, by designing the distributions of groups of triangular pores, the obtained thermal rectification ratio ranged from 10.0% to 27.5%. This work indicates that the silicon structures with pores are promising to be made into the thermal rectifier.

Introduction

With the rapid development of miniaturization and increasing demand of high-power density of semiconductor devices, it is vital to reveal the dominant rule of thermal conduction in microscale and nanoscale structures. The thermal rectification is an attractive and special heat transfer phenomenon which has the potential for applications in thermal signal processing and thermal management. If the thermal diodes based on the mechanism of thermal rectification can be successfully developed, it will play a significantly important role as the electronic diode does in the modern electronic industry. Conceptually, the thermal rectification refers to that the thermal conductivity or resistance is different when the heat flux directions are opposite. Under the same temperature difference, heat can preferentially run in one direction, but not in the opposite direction. Recently, many studies have been conducted on the behaviors of thermal rectification. However, the mechanism of thermal rectification and the parameters that dominate the thermal rectification phenomenon need to be further investigated.

The thermal rectification phenomenon was first investigated at the solid-solid interface [1], [2], [3]. The thermal potential barrier existing at the interface of two different thermal conductivity material is found to cause the thermal rectification phenomenon. Rajabpour [4] investigated the thermal rectification in graphene and graphene nanoribbons. There exists a Kaptiza resistance in the interface between the graphene and graphene nanoribbons, which causes the thermal rectification phenomenon. Liu [5] studied the interface thermal conductance between the hybrid graphene/silicene heterostructures and found that the interface thermal conductance depends on the heat flux direction indicating the existence of the thermal rectification at the interface. The interfacial thermal resistance was also investigated by Wang [6], [7] in bi-layer nanofilm of argon type materials to explore the corresponding mechanism, and it was found that the interfacial thermal resistance depends on the temperature difference and the atomic mass ratio. For nanoscale structures, it is the unique thermal properties which play important roles in leading to the thermal rectification. Besides the interface between two dissimilar materials, the factors like grade mass density, asymmetric geometries and temperature dependent conductivity can also trigger the thermal rectification phenomenon [8]. Alaghemandi [9] established a set of mass-graded nanosized model system with four carbon nanotubes on one side and a single one carbon nanotube on the other side and the thermal rectification phenomenon was detected in the externally mass-loaded nanotubes. Yuan [10] studied the thermal rectification in hybrid pristine and silicon-functionalized graphene nanoribbons and found that the thermal rectification factor can be adjusted by the Si/C ratio and silicon distribution. Through the hybrid pristine and hydrogenated carbon nanotube structures, Goridiz [11] also found the thermal rectification behavior and investigated the influence of two main factors, namely, the hydrogen coverage and the diameters of the nanotubes.

Among the above-mentioned factors that affect the thermal rectification [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], the adoption of asymmetric geometries is a good way to control the thermal rectification phenomenon because that the possible thermal rectifier device can be realized with only one material system. By designing triangular cavities in silicene nanosheets and silicon nanofilm, the thermal rectification phenomenon was explored by Liang [21], [22]. Moreover, Liang [23] investigated the thermal rectification in asymmetric silicon nanoribbons in which the width of the thin end of the structure was not fixed at a constant value but varies from 1 unit cell to 5 unit cells. The results indicated that when the heat flows from the thin end to the thick end, the thermal conductivity becomes apparently larger. Ruan [24] demonstrated the thermal rectification effect in asymmetrically graphenen nanoribbons through defect engineering and analyzed the influences of the Single-Vacancy defect, Di-Vacancy defect, Substitutional silicon defect and Stone-Wales defect on the thermal rectification. In general, the above-mentioned simulations demonstrated that the spatial asymmetry in geometry is a key factor to achieve the thermal rectification.

In recent years, many theoretical studies on thermal rectification were conducted using the molecular dynamic (MD) simulation methods [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31] and the main research was focused on the graphenen-based systems. Silicon materials as highly efficient thermoelectric materials have great potentials to be used in the fabrication of the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) devices and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) [32], [33], [34]. Considering the advantages of the thermoelectric properties of semiconductor silicon materials, they will play important roles in thermal signal processing and thermal management. Therefore, the silicon material is a good candidate for the thermal rectifier. Compared with the comprehensive research on the thermal rectification of graphene-based structures, the thermal rectification of silicon-based structures still needs to be further explored and the asymmetric geometries effect should be fully understood.

In this paper, the heat transport in the silicon device with triangular pores is investigated. The reverse nonequilibrium molecular dynamics (RNEMD) method is adopted to simulate the equivalent thermal resistance of the triangular pores and thermal conductivity at the temperature of 300 K. The thermal rectification phenomenon was observed in such silicon device with pores. Furthermore, parametric analysis was thoroughly conducted to reveal the influences of the angles and the distribution of triangular pores on the equivalent thermal resistance and the thermal rectification. This work provides a practice choice for the design of the thermal rectifier in silicon device.

Section snippets

Model and methodology

The schematic of the silicon configuration with triangular pore is shown Fig. 1. The length, width and thickness of the simulated silicon device are 65.17 nm, 21.72 nm and 1.09 nm, respectively. The designed pore is set in the shape of isosceles triangle, that is, the structure is symmetric about its horizontal axis. To investigate the effect of the triangular pore shape on thermal rectification, the vertex angle α varies from 40° to 120° with a constant value in height (L2 in Fig. 1) of 4.33

Results and discussion

Firstly, we tested the accuracy of the RNEMD simulation by calculating the thermal conductivity of the silicon device with no pores. The simulated thermal conductivity is about 13.87 W/(m K) at the temperature of 300 K with the device thickness of 1.09 nm, which is in good agreement with the thermal conductivity of silicon film reported by using the different calculating method [41], [42].

Conclusions

In this paper, the equivalent thermal resistance of pores and the thermal conductivity of the silicon device with triangular pores is investigated by the reverse nonequilibrium molecular dynamic method at the temperature of 300 K. The results show that the equivalent thermal resistance is affected by the heat flux direction, and it is found that larger equivalent thermal resistance can be achieved when the heat flows along the x-direction (that is, from the base to the vertex of the triangular

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Jia Chen: Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft. Xiaobing Zhang: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing – review & editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.12072160).

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