Analysis of Thermal Conductivity of Antimony Telluride Thin Films by Modified Callaway and Sondheimer Models

Abstract

We investigated the temperature-dependent thermal conductivity of antimony telluride (Sb2Te3) thin films by modified Callaway and Sondheimer models. In this study, Sb2Te3 thin films with a thickness of 400 and 500 nm were first prepared by radio frequency magnetron sputtering. The average thermal conductivities of the films were in the range of 0.8-3.9 W/m.K for temperatures between 20 and 300 K. The experimental results, including the thickness and temperature dependence of the thermal conductivity of the Sb2Te3 thin films, were then theoretically analyzed using both the modified Callaway and Sondheimer models, which showed good agreement with the measured values. This result indicates that the thermal conductivity is significantly reduced from the bulk values. We believe that the theoretical analysis could provide a significant contribution to further understand the fundamentals of the thermal transport in two-dimensional materials.