Thermal conductivity of individual silicon nanowires

The thermal conductivities of individual single crystalline intrinsic Si nanowires with diameters of 22, 37, 56, and 115 nm were measured using a microfabricated suspended device over a temperature range of 20–320 K. Although the nanowires had well-defined crystalline order, the thermal conductivity observed was more than two orders of magnitude lower than the bulk value. The strong diameter dependence of thermal conductivity in nanowires was ascribed to the increased phonon-boundary scattering and possible phonon spectrum modification.