28 August 2019
From crystals to glasses: a new unified theory for heat transport
SISSA scientists, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of California at Davis, develop a new approach for heat transport, with applications to the modelling of energy and planetary materials
Theoretical physicists from SISSA and the University of California at Davis, led by Stefano Baroni and Davide Donadio in the framework of the MaX EU Centre of Excellence in materials modelling, simulations, and design, lay brand new foundations to such a fundamental process as heat transport in materials, which finally allow crystals, polycrystalline solids, alloys, and glasses to be treated on the same solid footing. This feat opens the way to the numerical simulation of the thermal properties of a vast class of materials that, while being key in important technologies such as energy-saving, conversion, scavenging, and storage, or heat dissipation or shielding, and even in the planetary sciences, have thus far dodged a proper computational treatment.
The research has been published in Nature Communications.
Article PhysicsWorld