The cross-plane thermal conductivity of four Si/Si 0.7 Ge 0.3 superlattices and three Si 0.84 Ge 0.16 /Si 0.76 Ge 0.24 superlattices, with periods ranging from 45 to 300 and from 100 to 200 Å, respectively, were measured over a temperature range of 50 to 320 K. For the Si/Si 0.7 Ge 0.3 superlattices, the thermal conductivity was found to decrease with a decrease in period thickness and, at a period thickness of 45 Å, it approached the alloy limit. For the Si 0.84 Ge 0.16 /Si 0.76 Ge 0.24 samples, no dependence on period thickness was found and all the data collapsed to the alloy value, indicating the dominance of alloy scattering. This difference in thermal conductivity behavior between the two superlattices was attributed to interfacial acoustic impedance mismatch, which is much larger for Si/Si 0.7 Ge 0.3 than for Si 0.84 Ge 0.16 /Si 0.76 Ge 0.24. The thermal conductivity increased slightly up to about 200 K, but was relatively independent of temperature from 200 to 320 K.

Molecular dynamics simulations are used to examine how thermal transport is affected by the presence of one or more interfaces. Parameters such as film thickness, the ratio of respective material composition, the number of interfaces per unit length, and lattice strain are considered. Results indicate that for simple nanoscale strained heterostructures containing a single interface, the effective thermal conductivity may be less than half the value of an average of the thermal conductivities of the respective unstrained thin films. Increasing the number of interfaces per unit length, however, does not necessarily result in a corresponding decrease in the effective thermal conductivity of the superlattice.

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The thermal conductivities of epoxy composites of mixtures of graphite and graphene in varying ratios were measured. Thermal characterization results showed unexpectedly high conductivities at a certain ratio filler ratio. This phenomenon was exhibited by samples with three different overall filler concentrations (graphene 1 graphite) of 7, 14, and 35 wt%. The highest thermal conductivity of 42.4 6 4.8 W/m K (nearly 250 times the thermal conductivity of pristine epoxy) was seen for a sample with 30 wt% graphite and 5 wt% graphene when characterized using the dual-mode heat flow meter technique. This significant improvement in thermal conductivity can be attributed to the lowering of overall thermal interface resistance due to small amounts of nanofillers (graphene) improving the thermal contact between the primary microfillers (graphite). The synergistic effect of this hybrid filler system is lost at higher loadings of the graphene relative to graphite. Graphite and graphene mixed in the ratio of 6:1 yielded the highest thermal conductivities at three different filler loadings.

The three omega method has proven to provide accurate and reliable measurements of thermal conductivity of thin films and other materials. However, if the films are soft and conductive, conventional methodologies to prepare samples for the measurement technique are challenging and often unachievable. Various modifications to the sample preparation to employ this technique for soft conducting films are reported in this paper including the use of shadow masks for metal heater deposition and a process for preparation of low temperature insulating films required between film and heater. In this work, thick (∼5μm) and ultrathin (∼110nm) films of polyaniline as well as a thin (∼300nm) film of low temperature plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposited SiO2 as a function of temperature were measured. Though not considered a soft material, the silicon dioxide film was utilized for comparison with previous data. Results indicate that the SiO2 film exhibits a thermal conductivity slightly lower than others’ data [S. M. Lee and D. G. Cahill, J. Appl. Phys. 81, 2590 (1997); H. Yan et al., Chem. Lett. 2000, 392; H. Yan et al., Anal. Calorim. 69, 881 (2002); J. E. de Albuquerque et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 74, 306 (2003)], which is likely due to the low temperature processing conditions that results in additional disorder in the film. The polyaniline films exhibit an increase in thermal conductivity with temperature, which is largely due to increasing heat capacity. The thick film thermal conductivity is many times the value corresponding to the thin film, which is likely due to significant phonon boundary scattering present in the ultrathin film.