Nanoscale Energy Transport And Conversion

The key problem facing new energy conversion and storage technologies remains device efficiency. Designs based on nanostructured materials can yield improved performance in devices employing electrochemical reactions and heterogeneous catalysis, such as fuel and solar cells, batteries, etc.

In this Brief, authors introduce the advance in theoretical and experimental techniques for determining the thermal conductivity in nanomaterials, and focus on review of their recent theoretical studies on the thermal properties of silicon–based nanomaterials, such as zero–dimensional silicon nanoclusters, one–dimensional silicon nanowires, and graphenelike two–dimensional silicene. The specific subject matters covered include: size effect of thermal stability and phonon thermal transport in spherical silicon nanoclusters, surface effects of phonon thermal transport in silicon nanowires, and defects effects of phonon thermal transport in silicene.