Thermal conductivity of bulk and nanowire InAs, AlN, and BeO polymorphs from first principles

We compute the thermal conductivity of the alternative zincblende (ZB) and wurtzite (WZ) phases of InAs, AlN, and BeO. The bulk thermal conductivity of the ZB phase of BeO is predicted to be even higher than that of its WZ phase (the highest amongst all ceramics used in electronic technology). Our calculations agree well with the available experimental measurements for bulk ZB InAs, WZ AlN, WZ BeO, and WZ and ZB InAs nanowires, and we provide predictions for the remaining cases. The predicted good thermal conductor ZB BeO might have interesting applications in improved heat sinks for high performance semiconductor electronics. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.