The Laser Thermal Blog

Nanoscale to bulk

Thermal conductivity of nanoscale thin films

• SSTR is ideal for your thin film thermal conductivity testing needs.
• In addition to measurements of bulk wafers and substrates (source 1, source 2), SSTR has the unprecedented spatial resolution to measure the thermal conductivity of thin films.
• For example, SSTR can measure the thermal conductivity of single nanometer thick ALD grown thin films or micron thick AlN films (source).

SSTR measurements on ALD grown ultrathin film amorphous gate dielectrics (compared to TDTR) (source).

SSTR measurements of AlN crystalline thin films.2 SSTR data (temperature rise vs. power) on right for AlN film and silicon wafer control.

Unparalleled reliability

• Thermal conductivity measurements: Accuracy +/- 10%, Repeatability +/- 0.5%, Reproducibility +/- 1%
• Accurate thermal conductivity measurements of materials in agreement with literature values
• With exceptional instrumentation reliability and repeatability, SSTR-F offers unprecedented measurement stability on a daily basis for any user, exemplified by the SSTR-F data shown below. Spread in randomly sampled spots are sample related, not measurement driven.

Source

20 SSTR-F measurements at same spot

20 SSTR-F measurements at random spots

Turnkey testing

• Our patented fiber-optic design enables turnkey, automated testing of thermal conductivity.
• High-throughput SSTR-F testing of multiple samples facilitates, for example, screening the thermal conductivity of different thin films processed under different conditions
• Defects, stresses, compositional differences, and changes in density and microstructure that occur up during film growth result in changes in thermal conductivity, easily and rapidly identified vis SSTR-F

SSTR-F data on 4 different 200 nm dielectric films on silicon with thermal conductivity ranging from ~0.35 W/m/K up to 1.8 W/m/K.  SSTR-F allows for easy, rapid and automated identification of different temperature rises based on the thermal conductivity of the different films.