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Romano, Giuseppe

Publications and source records attributed to Romano, Giuseppe.

10 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

Thermal transport in nanoporous holey silicon membranes investigated with optically induced transient thermal gratings

In this study, we use transient thermal gratings—a non-contact, laser-based thermal metrology technique with intrinsically high accuracy—to investigate room-temperature phonon-mediated thermal transport in two nanoporous holey silicon membranes with limiting dimensions of 120 nm and 250 nm, respectively. We compare the experimental results with ab initio calculations of phonon-mediated thermal transport according to the phonon Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) using two different computational techniques. We find that the calculations conducted within the Casimir framework, i.e., based on the BTE with the bulk phonon dispersion and diffuse scattering from surfaces, are in quantitative agreement with the experimental data and thus conclude that this framework is adequate for describing phonon-mediated thermal transport in silicon nanostructures with feature sizes of the order of 100 nm.

Duncan, Ryan A. (ORCID:0000000328318099)↗
DOE OSTI2019

Fast and interpretable classification of small X-ray diffraction datasets using data augmentation and deep neural networks

X-ray diffraction (XRD) data acquisition and analysis is among the most time-consuming steps in the development cycle of novel thin-film materials. We propose a machine-learning-enabled approach to predict crystallographic dimensionality and space group from a limited number of thin-film XRD patterns. We overcome the scarce-data problem intrinsic to novel materials development by coupling a supervised machine learning approach with a model-agnostic, physics-informed data augmentation strategy using simulated data from the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD) and experimental data. As a test case, 115 thin-film metal-halides spanning 3 dimensionalities and 7 space-groups are synthesized and classified. After testing various algorithms, we develop and implement an all convolutional neural network, with cross-validated accuracies for dimensionality and space-group classification of 93% and 89%, respectively. We propose average class activation maps, computed from a global average pooling layer, to allow high model interpretability by human experimentalists, elucidating the root-causes of misclassification. Finally, we systematically evaluate the maximum XRD pattern step size (data acquisition rate) before loss of predictive accuracy occurs, and determine it to be 0.16° 2θ, which enables an XRD pattern to be obtained and classified in 5.5 minutes or less.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2017

Phonon Conduction in Silicon Nanobeam Labyrinths

Here we study single-crystalline silicon nanobeams having 470 nm width and 80 nm thickness cross section, where we produce tortuous thermal paths (i.e. labyrinths) by introducing slits to control the impact of the unobstructed “line-of-sight” (LOS) between the heat source and heat sink. The labyrinths range from straight nanobeams with a complete LOS along the entire length to nanobeams in which the LOS ranges from partially to entirely blocked by introducing slits, s = 95, 195, 245, 295 and 395 nm. The measured thermal conductivity of the samples decreases monotonically from ~47 W m -1 K -1 for straight beam to ~31 W m -1 K -1 for slit width of 395 nm. A model prediction through a combination of the Boltzmann transport equation and ab initio calculations shows an excellent agreement with the experimental data to within ~8%. The model prediction for the most tortuous path (s = 395 nm) is reduced by ~14% compared to a straight beam of equivalent cross section. This study suggests that LOS is an important metric for characterizing and interpreting phonon propagation in nanostructures.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2017

Thermal anisotropy enhanced by phonon size effects in nanoporous materials

While thermal anisotropy is a desirable materials property for many applications, including transverse thermoelectrics and thermal management in electronic devices, it remains elusive in practical natural compounds. In this work, we show how nanoporous materials with anisotropic pore lattices can be used as a platform for inducing strong heat transport directionality in isotropic materials. Using density functional theory and the phonon Boltzmann transport equation, we calculate the phonon-size effects and thermal conductivity of nanoporous silicon with different anisotropic pore lattices. Here, our calculations predict a strong directionality in the thermal conductivity, dictated by the difference in the pore-pore distances, i.e., the phonon bottleneck, along the two Cartesian axes. Using Fourier’s law, we also compute the diffusive heat transport for the same geometries obtaining significantly smaller anisotropy, revealing the crucial role of phonon-size effects in tuning thermal transport directionality. Besides enhancing our understanding of nanoscale heat transport, our results demonstrate the promise of nanoporous materials for modulating anisotropy in thermal conductivity.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

Single-molecule electronics: Cooling individual vibrational modes by the tunneling current

Electronic devices composed of single molecules constitute the ultimate limit in the continued downscaling of electronic components. A key challenge for single-molecule electronics is to control the temperature of these junctions. Controlling heating and cooling effects in individual vibrational modes can, in principle, be utilized to increase stability of single-molecule junctions under bias, to pump energy into particular vibrational modes to perform current-induced reactions, or to increase the resolution in inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy by controlling the life-times of phonons in a molecule by suppressing absorption and external dissipation processes. Under bias the current and the molecule exchange energy, which typically results in heating of the molecule. However, the opposite process is also possible, where energy is extracted from the molecule by the tunneling current. Designing a molecular “heat sink” where a particular vibrational mode funnels heat out of the molecule and into the leads would be very desirable. It is even possible to imagine how the vibrational energy of the other vibrational modes could be funneled into the “cooling mode,” given the right molecular design. Previous efforts to understand heating and cooling mechanisms in single molecule junctions have primarily been concerned with small models, where it is unclear which molecular systems they correspond to. In this paper, our focus is on suppressing heating and obtaining current-induced cooling in certain vibrational modes. Strategies for cooling vibrational modes in single-molecule junctions are presented, together with atomistic calculations based on those strategies. Cooling and reduced heating are observed for two different cooling schemes in calculations of atomistic single-molecule junctions.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2016

Temperature-dependent thermal conductivity in silicon nanostructured materials studied by the Boltzmann transport equation

Nanostructured materials show low thermal conductivity because of the additional scattering due to phonon-boundary interactions. As these interactions are highly sensitive to the mean free path (MFP) of phonons, MFP distributions in nanostructures can be dramatically distorted relative to bulk. Here we calculate the MFP distribution in periodic nanoporous Si for different temperatures, using the recently developed MFP-dependent Boltzmann transport equation. After analyzing the relative contribution of each phonon branch to thermal transport in nanoporous Si, we find that at room temperature optical phonons contribute 17 % to heat transport, compared to 5 % in bulk Si. Interestingly, we observe a constant thermal conductivity over the range 200 K < T < 300 K . Furthermore, we attribute this behavior to the ballistic transport of acoustic phonons with long intrinsic MFP and the temperature dependence of the heat capacity. Our findings, which are in qualitative agreement with the temperature trend of thermal conductivities measured in nanoporous Si-based systems, shed light on the origin of the reduction of thermal conductivity in nanostructured materials and demonstrate the necessity of multiscale heat transport engineering, in which the bulk material and geometry are optimized concurrently.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗