Ab Initio Phonon Transport Based on Nonequilibrium Green's Function Formalism: A Practical Approach

Herein, a highly practical first-principles approach for studying phonon transport across various materials, ranging from low-dimensional systems to three-dimensional bulk structures, as well as nanostructures, is presented. This method integrates the nonequilibrium Green's function (NEGF) formalism with ab initio calculations of dynamical matrices generated by Quantum Espresso. A detailed technical approach for extracting atomistic force constants and forming dynamical matrices that adhere to the tri-diagonal technique within the NEGF framework is provided. Additionally, an efficient method for constructing dynamical matrices of conventional cells from those of primary cells is introduced, remarkably reducing the computational costs associated with density-functional theory calculations. The robustness and applicability of this methodology are validated through several case studies.