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High Resolution Phonon-assisted Quasi-resonance Fluorescence Spectroscopy
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Vacuum phonon tunneling.

Igor Altfeder1, Andrey A Voevodin, Ajit K Roy

  • 1Thermal Sciences and Materials Branch, Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio 45433, USA. Igor.Altfeder.ctr@wpafb.af.mil

Physical Review Letters
|January 15, 2011
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

A new mechanism called field-induced phonon tunneling allows heat to transfer across vacuum gaps via atomic vibrations. This discovery, made using scanning tunneling microscopy, reveals how thermal energy moves at the nanoscale.

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Area of Science:

  • Condensed Matter Physics
  • Surface Science
  • Nanoscale Heat Transfer

Background:

  • Interfacial thermal transport is crucial for nanoscale devices.
  • Understanding heat transfer across vacuum gaps is challenging.
  • Existing models do not fully explain observed thermal phenomena.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To identify and characterize novel mechanisms of interfacial thermal transport.
  • To investigate heat transfer across angstrom-scale vacuum gaps.
  • To elucidate the role of electric fields and electron-phonon interactions in thermal transport.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized ultrahigh vacuum inelastic scanning tunneling microscopy (STM).
  • Employed the STM tip's Fermi-Dirac distribution as an in situ atomic-scale thermometer.
  • Analyzed the transmission of thermal vibrations across a vacuum gap.

Main Results:

  • Discovered and validated field-induced phonon tunneling as a new thermal transport mechanism.
  • Demonstrated effective transmission of atomic vibrations across angstrom-wide vacuum gaps.
  • Identified interfacial electric fields and image charges as drivers of phonon tunneling.

Conclusions:

  • Field-induced phonon tunneling is a significant mechanism for interfacial thermal transport.
  • Surface electron-phonon interactions enhance the rate of phonon tunneling.
  • This finding opens new avenues for controlling heat flow at the nanoscale.