An electrical probe of the phonon mean-free path spectrum.

Most studies of the mean-free path accumulation function (MFPAF) rely on optical techniques to probe heat transfer at length scales on the order of the phonon mean-free path. In this paper, we propose and implement a purely electrical probe of the MFPAF that relies on photo-lithographically defined heater-thermometer separation to set the length scale. An important advantage of the proposed technique is its insensitivity to the thermal interfacial impedance and its compatibility with a large array of temperature-controlled chambers that lack optical ports.

A "2-omega" technique for measuring anisotropy of thermal conductivity.

A popular method of measuring the thermal conductivity of thin films and substrates, the "3-omega" method, is modified to yield a new technique for measuring the anisotropy in thermal transport in bulk materials. The validity of the proposed technique is established by measuring the thermal conductivity of strontium titanate, which is expected to be isotropic because of its cubic unit cell. The technique is then applied to rutile TiO(2).

Measurement of the high-temperature Seebeck coefficient of thin films by means of an epitaxially regrown thermometric reference material.

The Seebeck coefficient of a typical thermoelectric material, silicon-doped InGaAs lattice-matched to InP, is measured over a temperature range from 300 K to 550 K. By depositing and patterning a thermometric reference bar of silicon-doped InP adjacent to a bar of the material under test, temperature differences are measured directly. This is in contrast to conventional two-thermocouple techniques that subtract two large temperatures to yield a small temperature difference, a procedure prone to errors.

Semimetal/semiconductor nanocomposites for thermoelectrics.

In this work, we present research on semimetal-semiconductor nanocomposites grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) for thermoelectric applications. We study several different III-V semiconductors embedded with semimetallic rare earth-group V (RE-V) compounds, but focus is given here to ErSb:In(x)Ga(1−x)Sb as a promising p-type thermoelectric material. Nanostructures of RE-V compounds are formed and embedded within the III-V semiconductor matrix.