Nanophononic Metamaterial: Thermal Conductivity Reduction by Local Resonance

We present the concept of a locally resonant nanophononic metamaterial for thermoelectric energy conversion. Our configuration, which is based on a silicon thin film with a periodic array of pillars erected on one or two of the free surfaces, qualitatively alters the base thin-film phonon spectrum due to a hybridization mechanism between the pillar local resonances and the underlying atomic lattice dispersion. Using an experimentally fitted lattice-dynamics-based model, we conservatively predict the metamaterial thermal conductivity to be as low as 50% of the corresponding uniform thin-film value despite the fact that the pillars add more phonon modes to the spectrum.