Anomalous thermal transport in isotope-enriched germanium carbide
Abstract
Advances in modern electronics demand the dissipation of heat fluxes approaching 1000 W cm−2, which drives an urgent need for materials with thermal conductivity (κ) exceeding 1000 W m−1 K−1. Here, by solving the Boltzmann transport equation considering both three- and four-phonon interactions, we observe that isotopically pure cubic germanium carbide (GeC) exhibits a remarkable κ of 1018 W m−1 K−1 at room temperature, which is further corroborated by state-of-the-art machine-learning molecular dynamics simulations. Two unique mechanisms underlie this anomalously high κ: a remarkably strong isotopic enhancement effect (289%) and a surprisingly modest suppression due to four-phonon scattering (22%)-despite the presence of a wide acoustic-optical phonon gap. Moreover, we find that GeC defies the conventional Leibfried-Schlomann formula and exhibits a non-monotonic variation of κ with external hydrostatic pressure at elevated temperatures. Our findings establish isotope-enriched GeC as a material of ultrahigh κ and an ideal platform for exploring exotic phonon physics.
Related
- Anomalous enhancement of thermal radiation transport by quasidisorder
- Strong Thermal Conductivity Suppression in Isotope Purified Single Crystal Diamond with Phonon Scatterings of Color Centers
- The Richtmyer-Meshkov Instability of Thermal, Isotope, and Species Interfaces in a five-moment multi-fluid plasma
- Berry-Curvature Effect in Anomalous Transport
- Anomalous transport from effective field theory
BibTeX
@misc{zhou2026anomalous,
title = {{Anomalous thermal transport in isotope-enriched germanium carbide}},
author = {Wenjiang Zhou and Bai Song},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.06663},
eprint = {2611.06663},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.06663},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Anomalous thermal transport in isotope-enriched germanium carbide
AU - Wenjiang Zhou
AU - Bai Song
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/04
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.06663
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.06663
AB - Advances in modern electronics demand the dissipation of heat fluxes approaching 1000 W cm^−2, which drives an urgent need for materials with thermal conductivity (κ) exceeding 1000 W m^−1 K^−1. Here, by solving the Boltzmann transport equation considering both three- and four-phonon interactions, we observe that isotopically pure cubic germanium carbide (GeC) exhibits a remarkable κ of 1018 W m^−1 K^−1 at room temperature, which is further corroborated by state-of-the-art machine-learning molecular dynamics simulations. Two unique mechanisms underlie this anomalously high κ: a remarkably strong isotopic enhancement effect (289%) and a surprisingly modest suppression due to four-phonon scattering (22%)-despite the presence of a wide acoustic-optical phonon gap. Moreover, we find that GeC defies the conventional Leibfried-Schlomann formula and exhibits a non-monotonic variation of κ with external hydrostatic pressure at elevated temperatures. Our findings establish isotope-enriched GeC as a material of ultrahigh κ and an ideal platform for exploring exotic phonon physics.
ER -