Capturing Anharmonicity in a Lattice Thermal Conductivity Model for High-Throughput Predictions

High-throughput, low-cost, and accurate predictions of thermal properties of new materials would be beneficial in fields ranging from thermal barrier coatings and thermoelectrics to integrated circuits. To date, computational efforts for predicting lattice thermal conductivity (κ_L) have been hampered by the complexity associated with computing multiple phonon interactions. In this work, we develop and validate a semiempirical model for κ_L by fitting density functional theory calculations to experimental data. Experimental values for κ_L come from new measurements on SrIn₂O₄, Ba₂SnO₄, Cu₂ZnSiTe₄, MoTe₂, Ba₃In₂O₆, Cu₃TaTe₄, SnO, and InI as well as 55 compounds from across the published literature. To capture the anharmonicity in phonon interactions, we incorporate a structural parameter that allows the model to predict κ_L within a factor of 1.5 of the experimental value across 4 orders of magnitude in κ_L values and over a diverse chemical and structural phase space, with accuracy similar to or better than that of computationally more expensive models.