Nanoscale size dependence parameters on lattice thermal conductivity of Wurtzite GaN nanowires

Abstract A detailed calculation of lattice thermal conductivity of freestanding Wurtzite GaN nanowires with diameter ranging from 97 to 160 nm in the temperature range 2–300 K, was performed using a modified Callaway model. Both longitudinal and transverse modes are taken into account explicitly in the model. A method is used to calculate the Debye and phonon group velocities for different nanowire diameters from their related melting points. Effect of Gruneisen parameter, surface roughness, and dislocations as structure dependent parameters are successfully used to correlate the calculated values of lattice thermal conductivity to that of the experimentally measured curves. It was observed that Gruneisen parameter will decrease with decreasing nanowire diameters. Scattering of phonons is assumed to be by nanowire boundaries, imperfections, dislocations, electrons, and other phonons via both normal and Umklapp processes. Phonon confinement and size effects as well as the role of dislocation in limiting thermal conductivity are investigated. At high temperatures and for dislocation densities greater than 1014 m−2 the lattice thermal conductivity would be limited by dislocation density, but for dislocation densities less than 1014 m−2, lattice thermal conductivity would be independent of that.