Non-contact measurement for thermal conductivity of diamond-like and hard carbon thin films

Author

Ganming Qin, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Document Type

Thesis

Date of Award

5-31-1993

Degree Name

Master of Science in Applied Physics - (M.S.)

Department

Physics

First Advisor

Ken K. Chin

Second Advisor

John Charles Hensel

Third Advisor

Eugene I. Gordon

Abstract

In this research work, non-contact temperature measurement was applied to determine the thermal conductivity of diamond-like and hard carbon thin films. Dielectric materials widely used as thin films in device manufacturing are SiO₂, Si₃N₄, polymer, and etc. However, their heat dissipating capacity is not good for power devices. It is necessary to develop a new material for this purpose. Diamond crystal is a high quality dielectric material. It has the highest room-temperature thermal conductivity [k=20W (cm · K) at 20°C] among all materials. In addition, it has high electrical resistivity ( >10¹⁶ Ω · cm) and high strength [1]. So, diamond¬like film is the first candidate for this purpose. Two methods were reported to measure the thermal conductivity of diamond-like films [2, 3]: a DC technique [4] and an AC (or 3ω) technique [5,6]. In these methods, the temperature was measured by thermocouple or thermal resistor. The accuracy of the measurement will be affected by the leads of the sensors, since thermal energy will be transferred through the lead wires. This restricts the technique samples of thickness >5 μm. In practice, the thickness of diamond-like films used in power device applications is about 1 um or even less. In our experiment, contactless temperature measurement for thermal conductivity of diamond-like and hard carbon thin films was introduced to measure the samples with thickness of 2μm. The experimental results show that this method is useful to study thermal conductivity of diamond-like and hard carbon thin films. In the thesis, fundamentals of thermal detection are reviewed; the design, procedure, and validity of non-contact measurement method are presented; and experimental results are reported and discussed.

Recommended Citation

Qin, Ganming, "Non-contact measurement for thermal conductivity of diamond-like and hard carbon thin films" (1993). Theses. 1875.
https://digitalcommons.njit.edu/theses/1875