Influences of vacancy defects on thermal conductivities of Ge thin films

The effects of vacancy defects on the thermal conductivity of Ge thin films were investigated by employing molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and theoretical analysis based on the Boltzmann equation. Both the MD and theoretical results show that the lattice thermal conductivity dramatically decreases with the increasing of vacancy concentration at 400 and 500 K. In addition, the dependence of vacancy concentration on the thermal conductivity of Ge thin films becomes less sensitive as the temperature increases. Theoretical results also confirm that the major part of the lattice thermal conductivity reduction is associated with the point-defect scattering and phonon-phonon scattering processes.