Thermal conductivity of HgSe loaded in the pore lattice of a synthetic opal single crystal

Samples of the opal + HgSe nanocomposite with 100% filling of the first-order opal pores by mercury selenide were prepared. The effective thermal conductivity κ_eff and electrical resistivity ρ_eff were measured in the temperature range T=5–200 K, and the thermopower coefficient α was measured in the interval 80–300 K. The coefficient α of HgSe in opal was shown to remain the same as that in bulk mercury selenide samples with similar carrier concentrations. The mechanism of carrier scattering in the HgSe loaded in opal also did not change. The total thermal conductivity κ _tot ⁰ and electrical resistivity ρ⁰ were isolated from κ_eff and ρ_eff, and the electronic (κ _e ⁰ ) and lattice (κ _ph ⁰ ) components of thermal conductivity of HgSe in opal were determined. The magnitude of κ _ph ⁰ was found to be considerably smaller than κ_ph of bulk HgSe with the same carrier concentration throughout the temperature interval studied (5–200 K). For T>20 K, this behavior of κ _ph ⁰ (T) is accounted for by the presence of specific impurities and defects forming in HgSe, and for T<20 K, by the onset of boundary scattering of phonons in the bottlenecks of the horn-shaped channels connecting first-order octahedral and tetrahedral opal pores loaded by mercury selenide.