Scanning Thermal and Thermoelectric Microscopy

Nano-Localized Thermal Analysis and Mapping of Surface and Sub-Surface Thermal Properties Using Scanning Thermal Microscopy (SThM)

“…Sensitivity and in-plane spatial resolution issues are heavily dependent on the dominant heat transfer mechanism between tip and sample. Shi and Majumdar performed a quantitative study of the different heat transfer mechanisms between tip and sample (Shi & Majumdar, 2002;Shi, 2005). In this case, the dominant mechanism is gas conduction, which is translated in a spatial resolution not beyond 100-200 nm.…”

“…The characterization of temperature-dependent processes and exploitation of existing and new technologies require heat transfer management. At the same time, the decreasing of characteristic feature sizes in modern devices to the order of a few tens of nanometer has turned the study of thermal physical phenomena at reduced length and time scales into an area of intense research (Dekker, 1999; Shi & Majumdar, 2004; Cretin et al, 2007; Volz, 2007; Brites et al, 2012; Tovee et al, 2012; Yue & Wang, 2012; Kar-Narayan et al, 2013; Kaźmierczak-Bałata et al, 2013; Lee et al, 2014; Wielgoszewski et al, 2014 b ). The need for thermal nano-characterization techniques that enable measuring and controlling temperature with nanoscale spatial resolution and high temporal resolution has led to new developments in scanning probe microscopies enabling direct observation of physical phenomena with the desired spatial and temporal resolutions.…”

“…These have had great impact on experimental research (Menges et al, 2012; Hwang et al, 2014) and they have been applied to the investigation of thermal properties of materials at scales never before achieved. The use of nano-probes in scanning thermal microscopy (SThM) (Majumdar, 1999; Shi & Majumdar, 2004; Wischnath et al, 2008; McConney et al, 2012; Menges et al, 2013; Gomès et al, 2015) is a good example of such improvements.…”