Materials with low thermal conductivity are applied extensively in energy management,and breaking the amorphous limits of thermal conductivity to solids has attracted widespread attention from scientists.Doping is a c...Materials with low thermal conductivity are applied extensively in energy management,and breaking the amorphous limits of thermal conductivity to solids has attracted widespread attention from scientists.Doping is a common strategy for achieving low thermal conductivity that can offer abundant scattering centers in which heavier dopants always result in lower phonon group velocities and lower thermal conductivities.However,the amount of equivalent heavyatom single dopant available is limited.Unfortunately,nonequivalent heavy dopants have finite solubility because of charge imbalance.Here,we propose a charge balance strategy for SnS by substituting Sn2+with Ag^(+)and heavy Bi^(3+),improving the doping limit of Ag from 2%to 3%.Ag and Bi codoping increases the point defect concentration and introduces abundant boundaries simultaneously,scattering the phonons at both the atomic scale and nanoscale.The thermal conductivity of Ag0.03Bi0.03Sn0.94S decreased to 0.535 W·m^(−1)·K^(−1)at room temperature and 0.388 W·m^(−1)·K^(−1)at 275°C,which is below the amorphous limit of 0.450 W·m^(−1)·K^(−1)for SnS.This strategy offers a simple way to enhance the doping limit and achieve ultralow thermal conductivity in solids below the amorphous limit without precise structural modification.展开更多
Various soft materials share some common features, such as significant entropic effect, large fluctuations, sensitivity to thermodynamic conditions, and mesoscopic characteristic spatial and temporal scales. However, ...Various soft materials share some common features, such as significant entropic effect, large fluctuations, sensitivity to thermodynamic conditions, and mesoscopic characteristic spatial and temporal scales. However, no quantitative defini- tions have yet been provided for soft matter, and the intrinsic mechanisms leading to their common features are unclear. In this work, from the viewpoint of statistical mechanics, we show that soft matter works in the vicinity of a specific thermo- dynamic state named moderate point, at which entropy and enthalpy contributions among substates along a certain order parameter are well balanced or have a minimal difference. Around the moderate point, the order parameter fluctuation, the associated response function, and the spatial correlation length maximize, which explains the large fluctuation, the sensitivity to thermodynamic conditions, and mesoscopic spatial and temporal scales of soft matter, respectively. Possible applications to switching chemical bonds or allosteric biomachines determining their best working temperatures are also briefly discussed.展开更多
基金supported by the CAS Project for Young Scientists in Basic Research(YSBR-070)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(21925110,21890750,U2032161,12147105)+8 种基金the USTC Research Funds of the Double First-Class Initiative(YD2060002004)the National Key Research and Development Program of China(2022YFA1203600,2022YFA1203601,2022YFA1203602)the Natural Science Foundation of China-Anhui Joint Fund(U23A20121)the Outstanding Youth Foundation of Anhui Province(2208085J14)the Anhui Provincial Key Research and Development Project(202004a050200760)the Key R&D Program of Shandong Province(2021CXGC010302)the Users with Excellence Project of Hefei Science Center CAS(2021HSC-UE004)the Fellowship of the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation(2022M710141)the open foundation of the Key Laboratory of the Engineering Research Center of Building Energy Efficiency Control and Evaluation,Ministry of Education(AHJZNX-2023-04).
文摘Materials with low thermal conductivity are applied extensively in energy management,and breaking the amorphous limits of thermal conductivity to solids has attracted widespread attention from scientists.Doping is a common strategy for achieving low thermal conductivity that can offer abundant scattering centers in which heavier dopants always result in lower phonon group velocities and lower thermal conductivities.However,the amount of equivalent heavyatom single dopant available is limited.Unfortunately,nonequivalent heavy dopants have finite solubility because of charge imbalance.Here,we propose a charge balance strategy for SnS by substituting Sn2+with Ag^(+)and heavy Bi^(3+),improving the doping limit of Ag from 2%to 3%.Ag and Bi codoping increases the point defect concentration and introduces abundant boundaries simultaneously,scattering the phonons at both the atomic scale and nanoscale.The thermal conductivity of Ag0.03Bi0.03Sn0.94S decreased to 0.535 W·m^(−1)·K^(−1)at room temperature and 0.388 W·m^(−1)·K^(−1)at 275°C,which is below the amorphous limit of 0.450 W·m^(−1)·K^(−1)for SnS.This strategy offers a simple way to enhance the doping limit and achieve ultralow thermal conductivity in solids below the amorphous limit without precise structural modification.
基金Project supported by the National Basic Research Program of China(Grant No.2013CB932804)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.11274319 and 11421063)
文摘Various soft materials share some common features, such as significant entropic effect, large fluctuations, sensitivity to thermodynamic conditions, and mesoscopic characteristic spatial and temporal scales. However, no quantitative defini- tions have yet been provided for soft matter, and the intrinsic mechanisms leading to their common features are unclear. In this work, from the viewpoint of statistical mechanics, we show that soft matter works in the vicinity of a specific thermo- dynamic state named moderate point, at which entropy and enthalpy contributions among substates along a certain order parameter are well balanced or have a minimal difference. Around the moderate point, the order parameter fluctuation, the associated response function, and the spatial correlation length maximize, which explains the large fluctuation, the sensitivity to thermodynamic conditions, and mesoscopic spatial and temporal scales of soft matter, respectively. Possible applications to switching chemical bonds or allosteric biomachines determining their best working temperatures are also briefly discussed.
