Electrons and Phonons: The Theory of Transport Phenomena in Solids (Oxford Classic Texts in the Physical Sciences)

I mainly studied the chapters related to phonons and electron-phonon interactions. The book starts off with one of the best explanations of the Bloch theorem I've ever seen, as applied to phonons. The chapter on phonon-phonon interaction is a great bridge between a basic textbook on solid state like Kittel, and research papers. The rigorous treatment of 3-phonon processes presented in this chapter is perhaps more useful than the author implies, because when it was written in 1958, density functional theory had not yet been invented, and it was virtually impossible then to get a good theory of anharmonic coefficients. In my opinion, electron-phonon interactions were not as well explained. The author uses several superficially similar models without adequately explaining the differences. Also, he uses seemingly disparate concepts (uniformity of Fermi level in $5.6, "Deformation Potential", and scattering theory in $5.7, "Bardeen's self-consistent calculation") to obtain the matrix element for e-ph scattering, and seemingly magically obtains similar-looking results. For studying the Frohlich interaction, I'd instead recommend Feynman's "Statistical Mechanics: A set of lectures" since it gives a more comprehensive treatment, while assuming similar mathematical preparation. The Boltzmann transport theory (Ch.$7) was very well explained, and I especially recommend the discussion on the formal properties of the collision operator, because it yields the only plausible way of obtaining an upper bound on the resistivity. Ch. $8, "Lattice conduction" is an applied chapter and contains some surprises about the interplay of various scattering mechanisms in determining the phonon thermal conductivity. Ch. $11, "Size and surface effects" is good introductory reading for understanding heat transport in situations where the mean free path is comparable to the specimen size (especially in light of recent findings that phonons in silicon with MFPs of >= 1 micron contribute a significant fraction of the total heat flux).

Excellent summary of this subject. ziman is a well-regarded expert on this subject.He was a professor at Oxford for many years.

Very good book.