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6CCVD Research

Cross-Plane Phonon Conduction in Polycrystalline Silicon Films

At a Glance

Section titled ā€œAt a Glanceā€
MetadataDetails
Publication Date2015-02-14
JournalJournal of Heat Transfer
AuthorsJungwan Cho, Daniel Francis, P.C. Chao, Mehdi Asheghi, Kenneth E. Goodson
InstitutionsStanford University, BAE Systems (United States)
Citations9

Abstract

Section titled ā€œAbstractā€

Silicon films of submicrometer thickness play a central role in many advanced technologies for computation and energy conversion. Numerous thermal conductivity data for silicon films are available in the literature, but they are mainly for the lateral, or in-plane, direction for both polycrystalline and single crystalline films. Here, we use time-domain thermoreflectance (TDTR), transmission electron microscopy, and semiclassical phonon transport theory to investigate thermal conduction normal to polycrystalline silicon (polysilicon) films of thickness 79, 176, and 630 nm on a diamond substrate. The data agree with theoretical predictions accounting for the coupled effects of phonon scattering on film boundaries and defects related to grain boundaries. Using the data and the phonon transport model, we extract the normal, or cross-plane thermal conductivity of the polysilicon (11.3 Ā± 3.5, 14.2 Ā± 3.5, and 25.6 Ā± 5.8 W māˆ’1 Kāˆ’1 for the 79, 176, and 630 nm films, respectively), as well as the thermal boundary resistance between polysilicon and diamond (6.5-8 m2 K GWāˆ’1) at room temperature. The nonuniformity in the extracted thermal conductivities is due to spatially varying distributions of imperfections in the direction normal to the film associated with nucleation and coalescence of grains and their subsequent columnar growth.

Tech Support

Section titled ā€œTech Supportā€

Original Source

Section titled ā€œOriginal Sourceā€

References

Section titled ā€œReferencesā€
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  2. 2013 - From the Casimir Limit to Phononic Crystals: 20 Years of Phonon Transport Studies Using Silicon-on-Insulator Technology [Crossref]
  3. 2010 - Reduction in the Thermal Conductivity of Single Crystalline Silicon by Phononic Crystal Patterning
  4. 2005 - Thermal Conduction in Silicon Micro- and Nanostructures [Crossref]
  5. 2014 - Near-Junction Thermal Management: Thermal Conduction in Gallium Nitride Composite Substrates
  6. 1997 - Phonon-Boundary Scattering in Thin Silicon Layers [Crossref]
  7. 1999 - Phonon Scattering in Silicon Films With Thickness of Order 100 nm [Crossref]
  8. 2006 - Thermal Conductivity Measurements of Ultra-Thin Single Crystal Silicon Layers [Crossref]
  9. 2011 - In-Plane Thermal Conductivity Determination Through Thermoreflectance Analysis and Measurements [Crossref]

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