A CCNY team led by physics professors Carlos Meriles and Elisa Riedo recently reported on a platform for nanoscale thermal measurements based on magnetic resonance, and optical and atomic force microscopy.
“Their paper, ‘Imaging thermal conductivity with nanoscale resolution using a scanning spin probe,’ is based on a simple notion: that a hot probe in contact with a thermally conductive material, such as a metal, cools down because heat flows from the probe into the material. The latter is prevented, however, if the sample material is thermally insulating, implying that one can infer the sample thermal conductivity by continuously monitoring the probe temperature,” Phys.org reported.
“To implement this idea at the nanoscale, the researchers used a thermal atomic force microscope, where the cantilever temperature can be adjusted via the application of an external current,” Phys.org added.
Expected applications for this platform include heat flow in nanostructures, radiative heat transport in nano-gaps, the characterization of materials undergoing heterogeneous phase transitions, and the investigation of catalytic exothermal reactions.
