Higher-Order-Phonon Scattering Governs Targeted Control of Heat Conduction in Bulk Boron Arsenide

Abstract

Conventional approaches for modulating thermal conductivity usually rely on structural modifications and therefore cannot achieve reversible in situ regulation. Targeted phonon excitation has recently emerged as a promising strategy for dynamically tuning thermal transport, but its applicability has so far been demonstrated mainly in two-dimensional systems. Here, we extend this strategy to a three-dimensional bulk material by taking boron arsenide (BAs) as a representative example. Based on first-principles calculations and phonon Boltzmann transport analysis, we show that targeted phonon excitation modulates the thermal conductivity of bulk BAs in a strongly frequency-dependent manner. Within the three-phonon-only framework, the modulation at 300 K is weak but clearly bidirectional. However, once four-phonon scattering is included, the modulation changes qualitatively to a predominantly suppressive behavior. In the combined three-phonon plus four-phonon (3ph+4ph) framework, the strongest suppression occurs at 20.5 THz, where the relative thermal conductivity decreases to 0.828 and 0.415 for excitation intensities of 5 and 25, respectively. By comparing the 3ph-only and 3ph+4ph results, we show that four-phonon scattering plays a decisive role in determining the net modulation effect by raising the intrinsic scattering background and promoting a more systematic excitation-induced increase in the scattering of low-frequency heat-carrying phonons.