Experimental Iinvestigation of scaling effect on thermal transport in nanoscale hot spots

This article reports experimental investigation of the scaling effect on thermal transport in platinum nanoheaters deposited on a single crystalline silicon substrate. The size dependency of the thermal resistances of nanoheaters with dimensions from 5 μm down to 100 nm was experimentally obtained. Additional joule heating and electrical resistance thermometry in heater/sensor pairs of various dimensions and spacing (100 to 400 nm) were carried out in order to study the temperature distribution in the vicinity of these nanoheaters. The results of these two sets of measurements confirm that the thermal resistances of smaller nanoheaters are dominated by the interface resistance between the platinum and silicon substrate. Furthermore, analytical solutions of the BTE around a hot spot were used to evaluate and examine the significance of the localized heating or subcontinuum transport around a hot spot.