A four-probe thermal transport measurement method for nanostructures

Several experimental techniques reported in recent years have enabled the measurement of thermal transport properties of nanostructures. However, eliminating the contact thermal resistance error from the measurement results has remained a critical challenge. Here, we report a different four-probe measurement method that can separately obtain both the intrinsic thermal conductance and the contact thermal resistance of individual nanostructures. The measurement device consists of four microfabricated, suspended metal lines that act as resistive heaters and thermometers, across which the nanostructure sample is assembled. The method takes advantage of the variation in the heat flow along the suspended nanostructure and across its contacts to the four suspended heater and thermometer lines, and uses sixteen sets of temperature and heat flow measurements to obtain nine of the thermal resistances in the measurement device and the nanostructure sample, including the intrinsic thermal resistance and the two contact thermal resistances to the middle suspended segment of the nanostructure. Two single crystalline Si nanowires with different cross sections are measured in this work to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. This four-probe thermal transport measurement method can lead to future discoveries of unique size-dependent thermal transport phenomena in nanostructures and low-dimensional materials, in addition to providing reliable experimental data for calibrating theoretical models