Phonon-mediated electron transport through CaO thin films.

Contribution of Ballistic Electron Transport to Energy Transfer During Electron-Phonon Nonequilibrium in Thin Metal Films

With the ever decreasing characteristic lengths of nanomaterials, nonequilibrium electron-phonon scattering can be affected by additional scattering processes at the interface of two materials. Electron-interface scattering would lead to another path of energy flow for the high-energy electrons other than electron-phonon coupling in a single material. Traditionally, electron-phonon coupling in ...

Thermal phonon boundary scattering in anisotropic thin films

Boundary scattering of thermal phonons in thin solid films is typically analyzed using FuchsSondheimer theory, which provides a simple equation to calculate the reduction of thermal conductivity as a function of the film thickness. However, this widely-used equation is not applicable to highly anisotropic solids like graphite because it assumes the phonon dispersion is isotropic. Here, we deriv...

Effect of Quantum Confinement on Thermoelectric Properties of 2D and 1D Semiconductor Thin Films

With device dimensions shrinking to nanoscales, quantum effects such as confinement and tunneling become significant in electron transport. In addition, scattering effects such as electron-phonon scattering, electron-impurity scattering also affect carrier transport through small-scale devices. Currently most of the commonly used transport models are particle based with quantum corrections inco...

Phonon and electron transport through Ge2Sb2Te5 films and interfaces bounded by metals

Picosecond thermal pulses in thin metal films

A simplified approach is introduced to describe the thermal behavior of a thin metal film exposed to picoseconds thermal pulses. The approach is based on the assumption that the metal film thermal behavior occurs in two separate stages. In the first stage, electron gas transmits its energy to the solid lattice through electron-phonon coupling and other mechanisms of energy transport are negligi...