Effect of normal processes on thermal conductivity of germanium, silicon and diamond

The effect of normal scattering processes is considered to redistribute the phonon momentum in (a) the same phonon branch - KK-S model and (b) between different phonon branches - KK-H model. Simplified thermal conductivity relations are used to estimate the thermal conductivity of germanium, silicon and diamond with natural isotopes and highly enriched isotopes. It is observed that the consideration of the normal scattering processes involving different phonon branches gives better results for the temperature dependence of the thermal conductivity of germanium, silicon and diamond with natural and highly enriched isotopes. Also, the estimation of the lattice thermal conductivity of germanium and silicon for these models with the consideration of quadratic form of frequency dependences of phonon wave vector leads to the conclusion that the splitting of longitudinal and transverse phonon modes, as suggested by Holland, is not an essential requirement to explain the entire temperature dependence of lattice thermal conductivity whereas KK-H model gives a better estimation of the thermal conductivity without the splitting of the acoustic phonon modes due to the dispersive nature of the phonon dispersion curves.