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Observation of superdiffusive phonon transport in aligned atomic chains

Nature Nanotechnology volume 16, pages 764–768 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Fascinating phenomena can occur as charge and/or energy carriers are confined in one dimension1,2,3,4. One such example is the divergent thermal conductivity (κ) of one-dimensional lattices, even in the presence of anharmonic interatomic interactions—a direct consequence of the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou paradox proposed in 19555. This length dependence of κ, also known as superdiffusive phonon transport, presents a classical anomaly of continued interest6,7,8,9. So far the concept has remained purely theoretical, because isolated single atomic chains of sufficient length have been experimentally unattainable. Here we report on the observation of a length-dependent κ extending over 42.5 µm at room temperature for ultrathin van der Waals crystal NbSe3 nanowires. We found that κ follows a 1/3 power law with wire length, which provides experimental evidence pointing towards superdiffusive phonon transport. Contrary to the classical size effect due to phonon-boundary scattering, the observed κ shows a 25-fold enhancement as the characteristic size of the nanowires decreases from 26 to 6.8 nm while displaying a normal–superdiffusive transition. Our analysis indicates that these intriguing observations stem from the transport of one-dimensional phonons excited as a result of elastic stiffening with a fivefold enhancement of Young’s modulus. The persistent divergent trend of the observed thermal conductivity with sample length reveals a real possibility of creating novel van der Waals crystal-based thermal superconductors with κ values higher than those of any known materials.

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Fig. 1: Crystalline structure of NbSe3 and experimental set-up for thermal/electrical measurements.
Fig. 2: Divergent and superdiffusive transport of 1D phonons.
Fig. 3: Elastic stiffening and normal–scattering-dominated phonon transport.

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Data availability

Data are available from figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14055413.

Code availability

The code that has been used for this work is available from the corresponding author on request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the National Science Foundation (NSF) for financial support under grants DMR-1532107 and CBET-1805924. The financial support for sample preparation was provided by the National Science Foundation through the Penn State 2D Crystal Consortium-Materials Innovation Platform (2DCC-MIP) under National Science Foundation cooperative agreement DMR-1539916. Z.M. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation under grant DMR-1917579. This work was performed in part at the Cornell NanoScale Facility, a National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI) member supported by NSF grant NNCI-2025233.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

    Lin Yang, Yi Tao, Zhiliang Pan, Yang Zhao, Qian Zhang & Deyu Li

  2. School of Mechanical Engineering and Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Design and Manufacture of Micro-Nano Biomedical Instruments, Southeast University, Nanjing, P. R. China

    Yi Tao & Yunfei Chen

  3. Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Yanglin Zhu & Zhiqiang Mao

  4. Department of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Science, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA

    Manira Akter & Terry T. Xu

  5. Materials Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Ke Wang

  6. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

    Ya-Qiong Xu

  7. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

    Ya-Qiong Xu

  8. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California–San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Renkun Chen

Authors
  1. Lin Yang
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Contributions

L.Y. conducted the transport property and Young’s modulus measurements. Y.T. and L.Y. performed the theoretical simulation. L.Y. and Z.P. performed sample preparation for the TEM studies. Y. Zhao and L.Y. fabricated the measurement microdevices. Y. Zhu and Z.M. synthesized the material. M.A. and K.W. performed the TEM characterizations. L.Y. and D.L. compiled and analysed the results. D.L. conceived and directed the project. L.Y. and D.L. wrote the manuscript with input from all authors.

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Correspondence to Deyu Li.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Nanotechnology thanks Bernd Gotsmann, Yongjie Hu and Dvira Segal for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–19 and Notes 1–10.

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Yang, L., Tao, Y., Zhu, Y. et al. Observation of superdiffusive phonon transport in aligned atomic chains. Nat. Nanotechnol. 16, 764–768 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-021-00884-6

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