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Using inelastic neutron scattering, x-ray diffraction, and heat capacity measurements, the authors study intrinsic localized modes in NaI. Their results suggest that, as the temperature is varied, NaI undergoes several unconventional phase transitions that are due to anharmonicity of the lattice vibrations.

Nanocomposite thermoelectric materials have attracted much attention recently due to experimental demonstrations of improved thermoelectric properties over those of the corresponding bulk material. In order to better understand the reported data and to gain insight into transport in nanocomposites, we use the Boltzmann transport equation under the relaxation-time approximation to calculate the thermoelectric properties of $n$-type and $p$-type SiGe nanocomposites. We account for the strong grain-boundary scattering mechanism in nanocomposites using phonon and electron grain-boundary scattering models. The results from this analysis are in excellent agreement with recently reported measurements for the $n$-type nanocomposite but the experimental Seebeck coefficient for the $p$-type nanocomposite is approximately 25% higher than the model's prediction. The reason for this discrepancy is not clear at the present time and warrants further investigation. Using new mobility measurements and the model, we find that dopant precipitation is an important process in both $n$-type and $p$-type nanocomposites, in contrast to bulk SiGe, where dopant precipitation is most significant only in $n$-type materials. The model also shows that the potential barrier at the grain boundary required to explain the data is several times larger than the value estimated using the Poisson equation, indicating the presence of crystal defects in the material. This suggests that an improvement in mobility is possible by reducing the number of defects or reducing the number of trapping states at the grain boundaries.

The mechanism for phonon scattering by nanostructures and by point defects in nanostructured silicon (Si) and the silicon germanium (Ge) alloy and their thermoelectric properties are investigated. We found that the thermal conductivity is reduced by a factor of 10 in nanostructured Si in comparison with bulk crystalline Si. However, nanosize interfaces are not as effective as point defects in scattering phonons with wavelengths shorter than 1 nm. We further found that a $5\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{at}.\text{ }%$ Ge replacing Si is very efficient in scattering phonons shorter than 1 nm, resulting in a further thermal conductivity reduction by a factor of 2, thereby leading to a thermoelectric figure of merit 0.95 for ${\mathrm{Si}}_{95}{\mathrm{Ge}}_{5}$, similar to that of large grained ${\mathrm{Si}}_{80}{\mathrm{Ge}}_{20}$ alloys.