Anisotropic thermal property characterizations and optical phonon contribution analysis of ZnO under high pressure

Zinc oxide (ZnO) is a wide band-gap semiconductor material with versatile applications in high-tech fields. Under high pressure, ZnO exhibits multiple phase transitions, which are of great significance for the development of photocatalysts, micro-devices with stress-controlled elements, and the investigation of relevant structure-activity relationships. However, previous studies have reported only theoretical calculations of its thermal transport properties under high pressure due to the challenges of experimental methodology. In this work, we employed a combination of the time-domain thermoreflectance technique and diamond anvil cell to characterize the anisotropic thermal properties of ZnO crystal under 0–20 GPa. Simultaneously, we studied the micro-structure of ZnO in the same pressure range by Raman spectra. Our proposed modified Leibfried-Schlomann equation adequately explained the non-monotonic trend of the thermal conductivity within 10 GPa observed in measurement results. Additionally, we report the ZnO thermal conductivity during the decompression process for the first time. Our experimental results and theoretical analysis advance the understanding of the thermal transport mechanism of wide-gap semiconductors under high pressure and pave the way for their high-pressure modification.