Tunability of thermal conductivity in low-dimensionality chalcogenide and pervoskite heterostructures

Recent work in lead chalcogenide alloys of PbSe, PbS, and PbTe has shown interesting electronic properties. Perovskites, such as SrTiO₃, have been the focus of much research in the past few years. The thermal properties of such materials are of interest for thermoelectric applications. We further consider low-dimensionality heterostructures, which generally have lower thermal conductivities compared to bulk. We use a computationally efficient shell model to find the phonon dispersion of bulk, and approximate the heterostructure phonon dispersions. Phonon Transport is modeled with a Monte Carlo formulation of the Boltzmann transport equation using an interfering particle method with phonon-phonon scattering, boundary scattering, defect scattering, interface scattering, and quantum confinement. We will report on the tunability of thermal conductivity by manipulating low-dimensionality heterostructures of these lead chalcogenide alloys and perovskites.