Nanoscale thermal transport across an GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure interface

Matthew Gorfien; Hailong Wang; Long Chen; Hamidreza Rahmani; Junxiao Yu; Pengfei Zhu; Jie Chen; Xuan Wang; Jianhua Zhao; Jianming Cao

doi:10.1063/1.5129629

Nanoscale thermal transport across an GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure interface

Struct Dyn. 2020 Mar 17;7(2):025101. doi: 10.1063/1.5129629. eCollection 2020 Mar.

Authors

Matthew Gorfien¹, Hailong Wang, Long Chen, Hamidreza Rahmani¹, Junxiao Yu², Pengfei Zhu, Jie Chen, Xuan Wang³, Jianhua Zhao, Jianming Cao

Affiliations

¹ Physics Department and National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32310, USA.
² Center for Ultrafast Science and Technology, Key Laboratory for Laser Plasmas (Ministry of Education) and School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
³ Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.

Abstract

We studied the thermal transport across a GaAs/AlGaAs interface using time-resolved Reflection High Energy Electron Diffraction. The lattice temperature change of the GaAs nanofilm was directly monitored and numerically simulated using diffusive heat equations based on Fourier's Law. The extracted thermal boundary resistances (TBRs) were found to decrease with increasing lattice temperature imbalance across the interface. The TBRs were found to agree well with the Diffuse Mismatch Model in the diffusive transport region, but showed evidence of further decrease at temperatures higher than Debye temperature, opening up questions about the mechanisms governing heat transfer at interfaces between very similar semiconductor nanoscale materials under highly non-equilibrium conditions.