Thermal control of thin films with nano structure

Abstract Thermoelectric energy conversions have been attracting much attention, which directly generate electric energy from thermal one by utilizing the Seebeck effect. Among various efforts to improve the conversion efficiency, control of phonon propagation with nano-scale structures has been popular, which utilize phonon scatterings on structural interfaces. The concept is based on the difference of mean free path (MFP) between phonons and electrons (charge carriers). In typical cases with silicon-base devices, MFP of phonons is in an order of 100 nm while that of electrons is 1-10 nm. Thus structures of 10-100 nm size are expected to be effective for suppressing the phonon heat transfer without much reducing the electric transport, leading to conversion efficiency improvement. We have developed a numerical scheme to investigate phonon transport based on the Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) for time development of the phonon distribution function. To treat various shapes of nano-scale structures, we have newly introduced a VOF (volume of fluid) like scheme. In the presentation, we will show results of several test systems of nano-structured Si thin films, with evaluation of effective electric conductivity, to discuss how much nano-scale structures improve the conversion efficiency.