Thermal Transport Property of Silicon Membranes With Asymmetric Porous Structure

The size effect on thermal conduction due to phonon boundary scattering in films was studied as controlling heat conduction. Thermal rectifier was proposed as a new heat control concept by a ballistic rectifier relies on asymmetric scattering of phonons in asymmetric linear structure. We focus on the thermal rectification effect in membrane with asymmetric pores. We discussed on the thermal rectification effect from the calculation and thermal conductivity measurement of asymmetric structured membrane. Thermal conduction was calculated by using radiation calculation of ANSYS Fluent based on Boltzmann transport theory which is development of equation of phonon radiative transfer from view point of phonon mean free path and boundary scattering condition. In-plane thermal conductivities of free standing membranes with microsized asymmetric pores were measured by periodic laser heating measurement. From the result of calculation, phonons were transition to ballistic transport in the membranes with asymmetric shaped pores and thermal rectification effect was obtained on the condition of specular scattering because of the asymmetric back-scattering of ballistic phonons from asymmetric structure. The thermal rectification effect was increased with decreasing thickness of membrane shorter and shorter than mean free path of phonon. From the result of measurements, we were able to confirm the reduction of thermal conductivity based on ballistic phonon transport theory, but the strong thermal rectification effect was not confirmed.Copyright © 2015 by ASME