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Computation of correlated ionic transport properties from molecular dynamics in the Green-Kubo formalism is expensive, as one cannot rely on the affordable mean square displacement approach. We use spectral decomposition of the short-time ionic displacement covariance to learn a set of diffusion eigenmodes that encode the correlation structure and form a basis for analyzing the ionic trajectories. This allows systematic reduction of the uncertainty and accelerate computations of ionic conductivity in systems with a steady-state correlation structure. We provide mathematical and numerical proofs of the method's robustness and demonstrate it on realistic electrolyte materials.

The thermal conductivity of disordered silicon-germanium alloys is computed from density-functional perturbation theory and with relaxation times that include both harmonic and anharmonic scattering terms. We show that this approach yields an excellent agreement at all compositions with experimental results and provides clear design rules for the engineering of nanostructured thermoelectrics. For Si(x)Ge(1-x), more than 50% of the heat is carried at room temperature by phonons of mean free path greater than 1 mu m, and an addition of as little as 12% Ge is sufficient to reduce the thermal conductivity to the minimum value achievable through alloying. Intriguingly, mass disorder is found to increase the anharmonic scattering of phonons through a modification of their vibration eigenmodes, resulting in an increase of 15% in thermal resistivity.

We characterize the response of isolated single- (SWNT) and multi-wall (MWNT) carbon nanotubes and bundles to static electric fields using first-principles calculations and density-functional theory. The longitudinal polarizability of SWNTs scales as the inverse square of the band gap, while in MWNTs and bundles it is given by the sum of the polarizabilities of the constituent tubes. The transverse polarizability of SWNTs is insensitive to band gaps and chiralities and is proportional to the square of the effective radius; in MWNTs the outer layers dominate the response. The transverse response is intermediate between metallic and insulating, and a simple electrostatic model based on a scale-invariance relation captures accurately the first-principles results. Dielectric response of non-chiral SWNTs in both directions remains linear up to very high values of applied field., Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. on 09/28/2005