Anharmonicity in the High-Temperature Cmcm Phase of SnSe: Soft Modes and Three-Phonon Interactions

Jonathan Skelton, Lee Burton, Stephen Parker, Aron Walsh, Chang-eun Kim, Aloysius Soon, John Buckeridge, Alexey A. Sokol, C. Richard A. Catlow, Atsushi Togo, Isao Tanaka

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Abstract

The layered semiconductor SnSe is one of the highest-performing thermoelectric materials known. We demonstrate, through a first-principles lattice-dynamics study, that the high-temperature Cmcm phase is a dynamic average over lower-symmetry minima separated by very small energetic barriers. Compared to the low-temperature Pnma phase, the Cmcm phase displays a phonon softening and enhanced three-phonon scattering, leading to an anharmonic damping of the low-frequency modes and hence the thermal transport. We develop a renormalization scheme to quantify the effect of the soft modes on the calculated properties, and confirm that the anharmonicity is an inherent feature of the Cmcm phase. These results suggest a design concept for thermal insulators and thermoelectric materials, based on displacive instabilities, and highlight the power of lattice-dynamics calculations for materials characterization.
Original languageEnglish
Article number075502
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume117
Early online date10 Aug 2016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 12 Aug 2016

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