Thermal conductivity in individual single-crystalline PbTe nanowires

We investigated the thermal conductivity of individual single-crystalline PbTe nanowires grown by chemical vapor transport method. Suspended MEMS was utilized to precisely measure the thermal conductivity of an individual nanowire. The thermal conductivity of a PbTe nanowire with diameter of 292 nm was measured to be 1.8 W/m·K at 300 K, which is about two thirds of that of bulk PbTe. This result indicates that the thermal conduction through a PbTe nanowire is effectively suppressed by the enhanced phonon boundary scattering. As the diameter of a PbTe nanowire decreases, the corresponding thermal conductivity linearly decreases.