Thermal diffusivity measurement of microscale slabs by rear-surface detection thermoreflectance technique.

A new approach to measure the cross-plane thermal diffusivity of a microscale slab sample, which can be fabricated by the focused ion beam and attached to a substrate, is proposed. An intensity-modulated pump laser is applied to heat the front surface of the sample uniformly, and the thermoreflectance signal is observed at the rear surface to evaluate thermal wave transport in the material. The thermal diffusivity can be obtained by fitting the phase lags of the experimental data with a theoretical model.