An optimized thermo-reflectance technique for thermal conductivity measurements of thin-film electronic materials

This article presents an overall evaluation of the transient thermo-reflectance technique as applied to the measurement of thermal properties of electronic materials. First, a specific highly-effective implementation of the method is presented. Then, the focus is placed on a systematic characterization of the performance of the thermoreflectance technique in which the influences of the most important system parameters on the accuracy of the TTR measurements are ascertained [1]. Finally, the power of the TTR measurement technique and its optimization are demonstrated through representative measurements, first of bulk materials [2] and then of thinfilm materials. The experimental investigations address the effects of doping, isotopic purity, interface resistance, deposition/growing methods, and film thickness on the thermal properties of the selected bulk and thin-film layers.