Time-domain Thermoreflectance Measurements Research Articles

Thermal conductivity and sound velocity measurements of plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposited a-SiC:H thin films

We report ultrafast optical measurements of the thermal conductivity and longitudinal sound velocity for a-SiC:H thin films deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). Porous and non-porous films with mass densities ranging from 1.0–2.5 g/cm 3 were obtained by intentionally varying the PECVD process conditions. The longitudinal sound velocities for these materials as determined by picosecond ultrasonics ranged from 2370 m/s to 10460 m/s, and the Young's modulus determined from the sound velocity measurements ranged from 5–200 GPa. Time domain thermoreflectance measurements determined the thermal conductivity to range from 0.0009 W/cmK to 0.042 W/cmK.

Measuring the Thermal Conductivity of Porous, Transparent SiO2 Films With Time Domain Thermoreflectance

Nanocomposites offer unique capabilities of controlling thermal transport through the manipulation of various structural aspects of the material. However, measurements of the thermal properties of these composites are often difficult, especially porous nanomaterials. Optical measurements of these properties, although ideal due to the noncontact nature, are challenging due to the large surface variability of nanoporous structures. In this work, we use a vector-based thermal algorithm to solve for the temperature change and heat transfer in which a thin film subjected to a modulated heat source is sandwiched between two thermally conductive pathways. We validate our solution with time domain thermoreflectance measurements on glass slides and extend the thermal conductivity measurements to SiO2-based nanostructured films.

Percolation of thermal conductivity in amorphous fluorocarbons

We report experimental evidence of the percolation of thermal conductivity in nanometer scale thin films of amorphous fluorocarbon, using time-domain thermoreflectance measurements. According to the theory of Phillips and Thorpe, rigidity percolation in covalent glasses results in a power-law dependence of the elastic modulus on the average coordination number. Our measurements show that thermal conductivity behaves similarly. We derive the relation between thermal conductivity and coordination number from the rigidity percolation model using the theory of minimum thermal conductivity. Experiments verify the individual validity of each of these models in the film samples. This paper elucidates the physics of heat conduction in covalently bonded amorphous solids near the percolation threshold.

Ultrafast thermoreflectance techniques for measuring thermal conductivity and interface thermal conductance of thin films

The thermal conductivity of thin films and interface thermal conductance of dissimilar materials play a critical role in the functionality and the reliability of micro/nanomaterials and devices. The ultrafast laser-based thermoreflectance techniques, including the time-domain thermoreflectance (TDTR) and the frequency-domain thermoreflectance (FDTR) techniques are excellent approaches for the challenging measurements of interface thermal conductance of dissimilar materials. Both TDTR and FDTR signals on a trilayer structure which consists of a thin film metal transducer, a target thin film, and a substrate are studied by a thermal conduction model. The sensitivity of TDTR signals to the thermal conductivity of thin films is analyzed to show that the modulation frequency needs to be selected carefully for a high precision TDTR measurement. However, such a frequency selection, which is closely related to the unknown thermal properties and consequently hard to make before TDTR measurement, can be avoided in FDTR measurement. We also found out that in FDTR method, the heat transport in a trilayer structure could be divided into three regimes, and the thermal conductivity of thin films and interface thermal conductance can be obtained subsequently by fitting the data in different frequency range of one FDTR measurement, based on the regime map. Both TDTR and FDTR measurements are then conducted along with the analysis to obtain the thermal conductivity of SiO2 thin films and interface thermal conductance between SiO2 and Si. FDTR measurement results agree well with the TDTR measurements, but promises to be a much easier implementation than TDTR measurements.

Analysis of heat flow in layered structures for time-domain thermoreflectance

The iterative algorithm of Feldman for heat flow in layered structures is solved in cylindrical coordinates for surface heating and temperature measurement by Gaussian-shaped laser beams. This solution for the frequency-domain temperature response is then used to model the lock-in amplifier signals acquired in time-domain thermoreflectance measurements of thermal properties.