金属θ相氮化钽热导率达铜的三倍

Recent advances in first-principles theory have shown excellent agreement with the measured thermal conductivity of a wide range of materials (10–24), including silicon, diamond, boron nitride (BN), boron arsenide (BAs), and boron phosphide (BP). Such theoretical works provide new physical insights into the nature of thermal transport and motivate the exploration of high thermal conductivity mechanisms in new materials, including potential unexplored metallic analogs. Indeed, some very recent first-principles studies challenge the long-standing metallic limit and point to a possible breakthrough (25–27): Theoretical predictions indicate that a metastable transition metal nitride, the θ-phase of tantalum nitride (θ-TaN), may exhibit record-high thermal conductivity among all metallic materials, potentially surpassing that of copper and silver and approaching that of diamond or BAs …