• Tranchant, Laurent

Abstract

Miniaturization of transistors, whose sizes reach a few tens of nanometers nowadays,implies new problems of heat control at very short scales. This big challenge among others enabled the emergence of nanoscale heat transfer as a new research domain. Near-field heat transfer is one of the axis of this thematic.It concerns the behavior of thermal waves at a scale shorter than their wave lengths.Under these conditions the waves with the highest energy density are evanescent, that is confined at the surface. Surface phonon-polariton (SPhP) is a particular case of an evanescent wave propagating at the surface of a polar dielectric material. This PhD work consists in examining SPhP propagation along the surface of micrometric glass tubes and in proving the ability of these waves to enhance heat transfer in these systems.A theoretical analysis has been carried out to justify the use of such heat waveguides whose thermal conductivity can be doubled due to SPhP. The experimental detection of those waves based on their diffraction at the tip of the glass tubes is then presented. This emission is measured thanks to the assembly of a microscope and a Fourier-transform IR spectrometer. The presence of SPhPs is proved through measured spectra exhibiting their characteristic spectral signature.

Topics

• density
• impedance spectroscopy
• surface
• energy density
• glass
• glass
• thermal conductivity