Abstracts Book - IMRC 2018

• SC6-O018
THERMAL RECTIFICATION IN TELESCOPIC NANOWIRES
Milo Y. Swinkels 1 , Alessio Campo 1 , Lorenzo Di Mario 2 , Faustino Martelli 2 , Riccardo Rurali 3 , Ilaria
Zardo 1
1 University of Basel, Department Physik, Switzerland. 2 CNR, Istituto per la microelettronica e
microsistemi (IMM), Italy. 3 Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona, Theory and Simulation
of Materials, Spain.
Progress in the fields of electronics and photonics has brought a wide range of
technological developments in the last decades. In comparison, the control of
phonons is still falling short. Logical operations using phonons to switch, amplify
and route signals can be realized by nanoscaling. An important building block of
a phononic integrated circuit is the thermal diode. A thermal diode is a device
where the heat flow is suppressed when a heat gradient is applied in one
direction, as compared to the heat flow when the gradient is applied in the
opposite direction. In this work the thermally rectifying behavior is explored in
semiconductor nanowires (NWs) with a sudden change in diameter, referred to
as “telescopic NWs”. Increased boundary scattering in the thin part reduces the
temperature dependence, causing a dependence on the direction of the heat
flow. Theoretical work on telescopic NWs 1 showed a potential rectification of
more than 50%. The thermal transport in telescopic silicon nanowires is studied
experimentally. These wires are created by partly embedding a silicon NW in a
polymer and subsequent etching of the exposed part of the NW. The thermal
transport properties of the wires are studied using μ-Raman thermometry,
combined with electronic heaters to control the thermal gradient. A heat
transfer model developed to describe telescopic NWs will also be discussed.
Reference
1
X. Cartoixà, L. Colombo, and R. Rurali, Nano Lett. 15, 8255 (2015)
Keywords: Silicon nanowires, thermal transport, phononics
Presenting authors email: rrurali@icmab.es