Thermal conductivity in non-metallic crystalline materials results from cumulative contributions of phonons that have a broad range of mean free paths. Here we use high frequency surface temperature modulation that generates non-diffusive phonon transport to probe the phonon mean free path spectra of GaAs, GaN, AlN, and 4H-SiC at temperatures near 80 K, 150 K, 300 K, and 400 K. We find that phonons with MFPs greater than 230 ± 120 nm, 1000 ± 200 nm, 2500 ± 800 nm, and 4200 ± 850 nm contribute 50% of the bulk thermal conductivity of GaAs, GaN, AlN, and 4H-SiC near room temperature. By non-dimensionalizing the data based on Umklapp scattering rates of phonons, we identified a universal phonon mean free path spectrum in small unit cell crystalline semiconductors at high temperature.

Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)-poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) thin films on indium tin oxide and glass substrates have been fabricated and subjected to a non-adiabatic annealing process. The films showed subtle changes in their structure and optical properties as well as an increase in conductivity due to the effects of rapid thermal annealing. Through a combination of Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy studies in conjunction with electrical characterization, and four-point probe measurements, material enrichment of conductive PEDOT domains at the polymer-metal interface have been demonstrated, which well explains the surface conductivity improvement of a thin film of PEDOT:PSS after annealing.

We show that the use of sub-nm adhesion layers significantly enhances the thermal interface conductance at metal-dielectric interfaces. A metal-dielectric interface between Au and sapphire (Al 2 O 3 ) was considered using Cu (low optical loss) and Cr (high optical loss) as adhesion layers. To enable high throughput measurements each adhesion layer was deposited as a wedge such that a continuous range of thickness could be sampled. Our measurements of thermal interface conductance at the metal-Al 2 O 3 interface made using frequency domain thermoreflectance show that a 1 nm thick adhesion layer of Cu or Cr is sufficient to enhance the thermal interface conductance by more than a factor of 2 or 4, respectively, relative to the pure Au-Al 2 O 3 interface. The enhancement agrees with the Diffuse Mismatch Model-based predictions of accumulated thermal conductance versus adhesion layer thickness assuming that it contributes phonons with wavelengths less than its adhesion layer thickness, while those with longer wavelengths transmit directly from the Au.

Thermal conductivities (k) of the individual layers of a GaN-based light emitting diode (LED) were measured along [0001] using the 3-omega method from 100-400 K. Base layers of AlN, GaN, and InGaN, grown by organometallic vapor phase epitaxy on SiC, have effective k much lower than bulk values. The 100 nm thick AlN layer has k ¼ 0.93 6 0.16 W/mK at 300 K, which is suppressed >100 times relative to bulk AlN. Transmission electron microscope images revealed high dislocation densities (4 Â 10 10 cm À2 ) within AlN and a severely defective AlN-SiC interface that cause additional phonon scattering. Resultant thermal resistances degrade LED performance and lifetime making layer-by-layer k, a critical design metric for LEDs. More than 20% of electricity in the United States is consumed by lighting. Solid-state light emitting diodes (LEDs) hold considerable potential to be more efficient and effective sources of artificial light than incandescent and fluorescent technologies. 1 Group III nitride-based blue and green LEDs are currently being developed for this purpose. Device architectures consist of light-emitting multiple quantum wells (MQWs) supported by base layers of aluminum nitride (AlN), gallium nitride (GaN), and indium gallium nitride (InGaN). The MQW itself is a periodic structure composed of alternating InGaN wells and GaN barriers.Heat generation and removal in the LED are complicated by multiple interfaces, causing high operating temperatures that degrade efficiency, shift the emission spectrum, and reduce the lifetime of LEDs. 2 Prior experimental investigations of bulk GaN and AlN have shown that thermal transport is phonon-dominated. [3][4][5][6] Previous thin film studies have been (i) based on ideal films with low defect concentrations that are unrepresentative of LED grade films 3,7 or (ii) focused on high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs), rather than LED architectures. [8][9][10] Neither submicron GaN films nor real nitride based LED devices have been investigated.Studies of Si and other thin films have demonstrated that thermal conductivity is greatly reduced when the thickness of the film or the defect spacing is less than the intrinsic mean free path of the phonons. 5,11,12 Nitride based LED structures are fabricated from multiple layers of thin films ranging from 3 nm to 100 nm in thickness; whereas, the spectrum-average phonon mean free path in GaN at 300 K is $100 nm, 13 and the longest phonon mean free paths in the spectrum are much greater. 14 To achieve economic viability, the nitride films are grown by organometallic vapor phase epitaxy (OMVPE) on foreign substrates, including SiC, sapphire, and Si. Mismatched lattice constants at the filmsubstrate interface create high densities of atomic and line defects, the latter of which that extend throughout the device as a source of phonon scattering. Given these considerations, this paper reports layer-by-layer experimental measurements of thermal conductivity in real nitride based LED architectures grown on [0001]-oriented SiC substrates. Th...

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We present the first measurements of thermal interface conductance as a function of metal alloy composition. Composition spread alloy films of

Concentrated solar power (CSP) technology, which converts sunlight into heat and then electricity, is an attractive alternative to photovoltaics because of its high capacity for thermalenergy storage, which can be converted, to electricity after sunset. As the efficiency of this technology is limited by the Carnot efficiency, higher absorber temperatures are desirable. At high temperatures conversion efficiency is limited by heat loss from solar absorbers via radiation in infrared wavelengths. Hence, it is desirable to develop selective solar absorbers, which can absorb solar radiation while reflecting infrared radiation. It is also important to develop high temperature selective solar absorbers, which can work in ambient conditions to reduce cost as compared to those that work under vacuum. Here, we report a selective solar absorber made of black chrome/ITO/SiO2, deposited on stainless steel, which showed stable performance at 900°C under ambient conditions for 120 hours. The proposed selective solar absorber exhibits an absorptance of 0.9 in the solar spectrum with an infrared emittance of 0.4 beyond wavelengths of 6 µm.

Solar-to-thermal energy conversion technologies are an important and increasingly promising segment of our renewable energy technology future. Today, concentrated solar power (CSP) plants provide a method to efficiently store and distribute solar energy. Current industrial solar-to-thermal energy technologies employ selective solar absorber coatings to collect solar radiation, which suffer from low solar-to-thermal efficiencies at high temperatures due to increased thermal emission from selective absorbers. Solar absorbing nanofluids (a heat transfer fluid (HTF) seeded with nanoparticles), which can be volumetrically heated, are one method to improve solar-to-thermal energy conversion at high temperatures. To date, radiative analyses of nanofluids via the radiative transfer equation (RTE) have been conducted for low temperature applications and for flow conditions and geometries that are not representative of the technologies used in the field. In this work, we present the first comprehensive analysis of nanofluids for CSP plants in a parabolic trough configuration. This geometry was chosen because parabolic troughs are the most prevalent CSP technologies. We demonstrate that the solar-to-thermal energy conversion efficiency can be optimized by tuning the nanoparticle volume fraction, the temperature of the nanofluid, and the incident solar concentration. Moreover, we demonstrate that direct solar absorption receivers have a unique advantage over current surface-based solar coatings at large tube diameters. This is because of a nanofluid's tunability, which allows for high solar-to-thermal efficiencies across all tube diameters enabling small pressure drops to pump the HTF at large tube diameters.