Slidephononics: Tailoring Thermal Transport Properties by van der Waals Sliding

Abstract: By interlayer sliding in van der Waals (vdW) materials, the switching electric polarization of ultrathin ferroelectric materials leads to the widely studied slidetronics. In this work, we report that such sliding can further tailor anharmonic effects and hence thermal transport properties due to the changed intrinsic coupling between atomic layers. And we propose an unprecedented concept dubbed as slidephononics, where the phonons and associated physical properties can be controlled by varying the intrinsic stacking configurations of slidetronic vdW materials. Based on the state-of-the-art first-principles calculations, it is demonstrated that the thermal conductivity of boron nitride (BN) bilayers can be significantly modulated (by up to four times) along the sliding pathways. Detailed analysis reveals that the variation of thermal conductivities can be attributed to the tunable (de-)coupling of the out-of-plane acoustic phonon branches with the other phonon modes, which is induced by the interlayer charge transfer. Such strongly modulated thermal conductivity via interlayer sliding in vdW materials paves the way to engineer thermal management materials in emerging vdW electronic devices, which would shed light on future studies of slidephononics.