title: Pressure-enabled phonon engineering in metals.
abstract: We present a combined first-principles and experimental study of the electrical resistivity in aluminum and copper samples under pressures up to 2 GPa. The calculations are based on first-principles density functional perturbation theory, whereas the experimental setup uses a solid media piston-cylinder apparatus at room temperature. We find that upon pressurizing each metal, the phonon spectra are blue-shifted and the net electron-phonon interaction is suppressed relative to the unstrained crystal. This reduction in electron-phonon scattering results in a decrease in the electrical resistivity under pressure, which is more pronounced for aluminum than for copper. We show that density functional perturbation theory can be used to accurately predict the pressure response of the electrical resistivity in these metals. This work demonstrates how the phonon spectra in metals can be engineered through pressure to achieve more attractive electrical properties.
authors.affiliation: Departments of Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy and.
authors.forename: Nicholas A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Lanzillo
authors.affiliation: Earth and Environmental Sciences, and.
authors.forename: Jay B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Thomas
authors.affiliation: Earth and Environmental Sciences, and watsoe@rpi.edu.
authors.forename: Bruce
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Watson
authors.affiliation: Center for Integrated Electronics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180; and.
authors.forename: Morris
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Washington
authors.affiliation: Departments of Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy andSchool of Basic Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar 751007, India.
authors.forename: Saroj K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Nayak
keywords: density functional theory; electron-phonon coupling; high-pressure conductivity