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Grüneisen parameters and thermal conductivity in the phase change compound GeTe

  • S.I.: Computational Electronics of Emerging Memory Elements
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Abstract

Thermal conductivity is one of the key properties for the application of phase change materials in nonvolatile memories. In this work we compute the mode Grüneisen parameters of the phase change compound GeTe by means of density-functional perturbation theory. The Grüneisen parameters are then used to estimate the bulk thermal conductivity with a phenomenological formula (Slack in Solid State Phys 34:1–71, 1979). This estimate is compared with the full solution of the Boltzmann Transport Equation we obtained in a previous work within the same theoretical framework. This comparison allowed us to validate the phenomenological formula also for the prototypical phase change compound GeTe.

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Acknowledgements

MB acknowledges funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 under Grant agreement No. 310339 and computational resources provided by Cineca (Casalecchio di Reno, Italy) through the ISCRA initiative.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienza dei Materiali, Università di Milano-Bicocca, Via R. Cozzi 55, 20125, Milan, Italy

    Emanuele Bosoni, Gabriele Cesare Sosso & Marco Bernasconi

  2. School of Physics and CRANN, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland

    Emanuele Bosoni

  3. Thomas Young Center and Department of Chemistry, University College London, 20 Gordon Street, London, WC1H 0AJ, UK

    Gabriele Cesare Sosso

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  1. Emanuele Bosoni
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  3. Marco Bernasconi
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Correspondence to Marco Bernasconi.

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Bosoni, E., Sosso, G.C. & Bernasconi, M. Grüneisen parameters and thermal conductivity in the phase change compound GeTe. J Comput Electron 16, 997–1002 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10825-017-1040-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10825-017-1040-5

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