Nonperturbative Quantum Nature of the Dislocation–Phonon Interaction

• Published in: Nano letters Vol. 17; no. 3; pp. 1587 - 1594
• Main Authors: Li, Mingda, Ding, Zhiwei, Meng, Qingping, Zhou, Jiawei, Zhu, Yimei, Liu, Hong, Dresselhaus, M. S, Chen, Gang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Chemical Society 08.03.2017
• Subjects: CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY; Dislocations; dislocation−phonon interaction; Dynamics; effective field theory; Field theory; Nanostructure; phonon transport; Phonons; renormalization; Scattering; Thermal conductivity; Transport; thermal conductivity; effective field theory; dislocation−phonon interaction; phonon transport; renormalization; Dislocations
• ISSN: 1530-6984; 1530-6992
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b04756

Despite the long history of dislocation–phonon interaction studies, there are many problems that have not been fully resolved during this development. These include an incompatibility between a perturbative approach and the long-range nature of a dislocation, the relation between static and dynamic scattering, and their capability of dealing with thermal transport phenomena for bulk material only. Here by utilizing a fully quantized dislocation field, which we called a “dislon”, a phonon interacting with a dislocation is renormalized as a quasi-phonon, with shifted quasi-phonon energy, and accompanied by a finite quasi-phonon lifetime, which are reducible to classical results. A series of outstanding legacy issues including those above can be directly explained within this unified phonon renormalization approach. For instance, a renormalized phonon naturally resolves the decade-long debate between dynamic and static dislocation–phonon scattering approaches, as two limiting cases. In particular, at nanoscale, both the dynamic and static approaches break down, while the present renormalization approach remains valid by capturing the size effect, showing good agreement with lattice dynamics simulations.