Estudo da condutividade térmica de cristais fonônicos em temperaturas sub-kelvin

Abstract

In this thesis we have studied the phononic band structure and the thermal conductivity of phononic crystals at sub-Kelvin temperatures. The low-frequency phonon spectra (up to tens of GHz) were obtained by solving the generalized wave equation with the Plane Wave Expansion method. The results for structures with two dimensional periodicity of the order of micrometers show the presence of GHz band gaps and narrow pass band. Such behavior is suitable for mechanical vibrations management like a GHz transversal phononic band pass filter. The phonon density of states was calculated aiming the study in transport problems involving phononic materials. Moreover, we have calculated the cumulative thermal conductivity at sub-Kelvin temperature regime of micro-phononic crystals aiming possible applications in thermoelectrics materials. The calculations were based in Boltzmann transport theory at low temperatures in order to highlight the role of low-frequency thermal phonons and to neglect phonon-phonon scattering. In accordance with recent results in the literature, our findings show that the cumulative thermal conductivity of the phononic crystals drops dramatically when compared with their bulk counterpart. Depending on the structural composition this reduction may be attributed to the phonon group velocity, the density of states or the presence of complete band gaps.