Large contributions from optical phonons to thermal transport in hexagonal carbon-boron-nitrogen monolayers

As representative semiconducting hexagonal carbon-boron-nitride lattices, C6BN and C2BN are experimentally realized two-dimensional (2D) plane materials and have recently become the focus of research. Herein, combining first-principles calculations with the Boltzmann transport equation, we performed a comprehensive study on the phonon interaction and thermal conductivity in C6BN and C2BN monolayers. It is found that the thermal conductivities of C6BN and C2BN monolayers at room temperature are reduced by 79% and 73%, respectively, due to four-phonon scattering, compared with the results including three-phonon scattering only. We can attribute this phenomenon to giant four-phonon scattering exclusive for the heat-carrying out-of-plane acoustic (ZA) phonons, because the reflection symmetry allows four-ZA processes much higher than three-ZA processes, and the quasiparallel behavior between the ZA and low-lying out-of-plane optical (ZO) branches contribute to a broad phase space for four-phonon scattering as well. Moreover, C6BN monolayer exhibits unusual behavior that optical phonons contribute about similar to 60% to the overall thermal conductivity under the four-phonon picture, which differs from the traditional case that acoustic phonons dominate thermal conductivity. Unexpectedly, two low-lying ZO modes have as high as 38% contributions to the thermal transport at 300 K under the four-phonon picture, causing 60% contribution of optical phonon modes, apparently larger than that of the three-phonon case (15%) and many other 2D materials, also indicating the four-phonon scattering has a more significant effect on acoustic phonons than on optical phonons. This finding not only highlights insight into the nature of phonon transport, but also provides a promising strategy for manipulation of heat transport based on optical phonon modes.