Ultralow thermal conductivity of two-dimensional metal halide perovskites.

We report on the thermal conductivities of two-dimensional metal halide perovskites films measured by time domain thermoreflectance. Depending on the molecular substructure of ammonium cations and owing to the weak van der Waals interactions in the layered structures, the thermal conductivity for our two-dimensional hybrid perovskites ranges from 0.1 to 0.19 W m-1 K-1, which is drastically lower than their three-dimensional counterparts. We use molecular dynamics simulations to show that the organic component induces a reduction of the stiffness and sound velocities along with giving rise to vibrational modes in the 5 to 15 THz range that are absent in the three-dimensional counterparts. By systematically studying eight different two-dimensional hybrid perovskites, we show that the thermal conductivities of our hybrid films do not depend on the thicknesses of the organic layers and instead are highly dependent on the relative orientation of the organic chains sandwiched between the inorganic constituents.