"The Study of Nanoscale Thermal Transport using Scanning Thermal Microscopy" 

Ram Munde, MSE PhD Candidate 

Advisor: Professor Raisul Islam

WebEx Link

ABSTRACT

Nanostructured materials, critical for thermal management in semiconductor devices, exhibit strong size dependence in thermal transport. Specifically, studying thermal resistance variation across grain boundaries, interfaces, and point defects is critically important for multiple applications, such as designing effective thermal interface materials for heterogeneous integration, developing thermoelectric materials for power conversion applications, and optimizing thermal budgets in the fabrication of power electronics devices. Frequency-domain Thermoreflectance (FDTR) based techniques can provide thermal resistance mapping in the micro-meter (µm) length scales. Scanning Thermal Microscopy (SThM) has the potential for quantifying local thermal transport in order of magnitude higher spatial resolution (< 100nm). However, challenges in accurate quantification of the raw signal to thermal conductivity and surface sensitivity limits its widespread adoption as a charac-terization standard for understanding the nanoscale heat transport and defect mediated thermal properties modulation in nanostructured films. This study addresses the key challenges in quantitative SThM measurements and proposes a finite-element modeling and experimental calibration framework to achieve accurate and reliable thermal resistance mapping across engineered materials with sub-100nm spatial resolution.