A research team at the University of Illinois as Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) has developed a new system for examining and measuring nanoscale thermal conductance at the interface between two materials. The scientists believe that with further refinement, the system can be used to harvest electricity from waste heat, increase cooling efficiency of microelectronic devices and target and destroy disease cells using hyperthermal therapeutics.
According to Mark Losego, a research assistant professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University, the team wanted to develop a system that could be used to “observe, analyze and quantify thermal flow across an interface with atomic-level precision.” Based upon the concept that at the nanoscale, thermal properties are the result of vibrations carried over bonds between atoms, the UIUC team developed a technique for studying the effects of these bonds on heat transport across an interface between two different materials by “transfer printing” gold layers onto a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) using a viscoelastic silicone stamp. Altering the chemical groups that were in contact with the gold layer to produce different bonds and using a laser technique capable of monitoring temperature decay with picosecond resolution, the researchers were able to evaluate heat flow over different types of bonds at the atomic scale.
The team’s findings will be presented during the AVS 59th International Symposium and Exhibition in early November.
