Marked Thermal Exaltation in Hybrid Thin Membranous Nanomaterials Covered by Stretched Nanodots for Thermoelectrics and Passive Cooling

An anisotropic thin membranous nanomaterial is modeled at the molecular scale to obtain a hybrid thermal behavior with applications from thermoelectrics to passive heat sinking. These antagonist phenomena, with different heat carriers, are obtained in two orthogonal in-plane directions, respectively x and y, when the thin membrane is covered by stretched nanodots forming elongated islands parallel to y. The phonon thermal conductivity is minimal in the direction x but maximal in that y. In nanomaterials composed of Si and Ge for the membrane and islands, respectively, thermal-conductivity exaltation as high as 22 folds is computed between the two phonon regimes in this theoretical study.