Ballistic–diffusive phonon transport and size induced anisotropy of thermal conductivity of silicon nanofilms

•We establish a ballistic–diffusive model for the phonon transport in nanofilms.•We predict the cross plane thermal conductivity of silicon nanofilms.•We analyze the size-induced anisotropy of thermal conductivity of silicon nanofilms.

The effective thermal conductivity of nanofilms is size dependent due to the diffusive–ballistic transport of phonons. In this paper, we investigate the cross-plane phonon transport from the viewpoint of the phonon Boltzmann equation. A predictive model for the size dependent thermal conductivity is proposed and agrees well with the results of molecular dynamics simulation for silicon nanofilms. The ballistic transport has different effects on the heat conduction in the in-plane or cross-plane directions, which causes the anisotropy of thermal conductivity of nanofilms. Such anisotropy is also size dependent and vanishes with the increase of film thickness.

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