Proceedings of nanoGe September Meeting 2015 (NFM15)
Publication date: 8th June 2015
Virtually all energy-related processes are enabled or limited on a microscopic level by multi-phonon processes. Multi-phonon processes are of particular importance when phonons couple to electrons, which is key to the performance of many semiconductor devices - they describe energy loss in solar cells and LEDs, the trade-offs between thermal and electric transport in thermoelectrics, and the capacity of materials for laser cooling. While phonon processes are well studied and understood for bulk semiconductors [1,2], semiconductors made from nanomaterials pose several previously unanswered questions: Why do nanomaterials show large multi-phonon transition rates and why is the electron-phonon coupling stronger than in the bulk? [3-5] Just as we can tune electronic and optical properties of nanomaterials, can we control phononic properties, thereby further tailoring nanomaterials for energy applications? In this talk, I will present recent work from my group that addresses these questions using experiment, simulation, and theory.