Lattice thermal conductivity of freestanding gallium nitride nanowires

We report detailed calculations of the lattice thermal conductivity of freestanding gallium nitride (GaN) nanowires with diameters ranging from 20 to 140 nm. Results are compared with experimental data on GaN nanowires grown by thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Calculations are based on the Boltzmann transport equation and take into account the change in the nonequilibrium phonon distribution in the case of diffuse scattering at the surfaces. Phonon dispersion relation is obtained in the elastic continuum approximation for each given nanowire. For valid comparisons with the experimental data, simulations are performed with a dopant concentration and impurity profile characteristic of thermal CVD GaN nanowires. Our results show that the room-temperature thermal conductivity of the nanowires has very low values, ranging from 6.74 W/m K at 20 nm to 16.4 W/m K at 140 nm. The obtained results are in excellent agreement with the experimental data. We have also demonstrated that in addition to impurity scattering, boundary scattering, and phonon confinement, the change in the nonequilibrium phonon distribution leads to a further reduction in the thermal conductivity of the nanowires and has to be taken into account in the calculations. Our conclusion is different from that of an earlier study which attributed the very low thermal conductivity to the unusually large mass-difference scattering in the nanowires. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3463358]