Publications

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The thermal conductivity of single crystal silicon was engineered using lithographically formed phononic crystals. Specifically, sub-micron periodic through-holes were patterned in 500nm-thick silicon membranes to construct phononic crystals, and through phonon scattering enhancement, heat transfer was significantly reduced. The thermal conductivity of silicon phononic crystals was measured as low as 32.6W/mK, which is a ∼75% reduction compared to bulk silicon thermal conductivity [1]. This corresponds to a 37% reduction even after taking into account the contributions of the thin-film and volume reduction effects, while the electrical conductivity was reduced only by as much as the volume reduction effect. The demonstrated method uses conventional lithography-based technologies that are directly applicable to diverse micro/nano-scale devices, leading toward huge performance improvements where heat management is important. © 2011 IEEE.

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Thermal detection has made extensive progress in the last 40 years, however, the speed and detectivity can still be improved. The advancement of silicon photonic microring resonators has made them intriguing for detection devices due to their small size and high quality factors. Implementing silicon photonic microring or microdisk resonators as a means of a thermal detector gives rise to higher speed and detectivity, as well as lower noise compared to conventional devices with electrical readouts. This LDRD effort explored the design and measurements of silicon photonic microdisk resonators used for thermal detection. The characteristic values, consisting of the thermal time constant ({tau} {approx} 2 ms) and noise equivalent power were measured and found to surpass the performance of the best microbolometers. Furthermore the detectivity was found to be D{sub {lambda}} = 2.47 x 10{sup 8} cm {center_dot} {radical}Hz/W at 10.6 {mu}m which is comparable to commercial detectors. Subsequent design modifications should increase the detectivity by another order of magnitude. Thermal detection in the terahertz (THz) remains underdeveloped, opening a door for new innovative technologies such as metamaterial enhanced detectors. This project also explored the use of metamaterials in conjunction with a cantilever design for detection in the THz region and demonstrated the use of metamaterials as custom thin film absorbers for thermal detection. While much work remains to integrate these technologies into a unified platform, the early stages of research show promising futures for use in thermal detection.

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Interaction between metamaterial elements and intersubband transitions in GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells is observed in the mid-infrared. Transmission measurements were performed through metamaterial arrays, each having a different resonance frequency. © 2011 OSA.

We examine the long-wave infrared (LWIR) optical characteristics of heavily-doped silicon and explore engineering of surface plasmons polaritons (SPP) in this spectral region. Both phosphorus (n-type Si) and boron (p-type Si) implants are evaluated and various cap layers and thermal annealing steps are examined. The optical properties are measured using ellipsometry and fit to a Drude model for the infrared (IR) permittivity. The predicted metallic behavior for Si in the thermal IR and its impact on the spatial confinement and dispersion for surface plasmons is studied. We find that the transverse spatial confinement for a surface plasmon on highly doped Si is strongly sub-wavelength near the plasma edge, and the confinement to the surface is enhanced to greater than 10 × that of the metal confined SPP over the entire LWIR spectrum. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.

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Measurements of the electrical and thermal transport properties of one-dimensional nanostructures (e.g.nanotubes and nanowires) are typically obtained without detailed knowledge of the specimen's atomic-scale structure or defects. To address this deficiency, we have developed a microfabricated, chip-based characterization platform that enables both transmission electron microscopy (TEM) of the atomic structure and defects as well as measurement of the thermal transport properties of individual nanostructures. The platform features a suspended heater line that physically contacts the center of a suspended nanostructure/nanowire that was placed using insitu scanning electron microscope nanomanipulators. Suspension of the nanostructure across a through-hole enables TEM characterization of the atomic and defect structure (dislocations, stacking faults, etc) of the test sample. This paper explains, in detail, the processing steps involved in creating this thermal property measurement platform. As a model study, we report the use of this platform to measure the thermal conductivity and defect structure of a GaN nanowire. © 2011 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Phononic crystals (PnCs) are acoustic devices composed of a periodic arrangement of scattering centers embedded in a homogeneous background matrix with a lattice spacing on the order of the acoustic wavelength. When properly designed, a superposition of Bragg and Mie resonant scattering in the crystal results in the opening of a frequency gap over which there can be no propagation of elastic waves in the crystal, regardless of direction. In a fashion reminiscent of photonic lattices, PnC patterning results in a controllable redistribution of the phononic density of states. This property makes PnCs a particularly attractive platform for manipulating phonon propagation. In this communication, we discuss the profound physical implications this has on the creation of novel thermal phenomena, including the alteration of the heat capacity and thermal conductivity of materials, resulting in high-ZT materials and highly-efficient thermoelectric cooling and energy harvesting. © 2011 SPIE.

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