Photothermal-Transport Imaging and Thermal Management of 2D Materials

Thermal management plays an important role in miniaturized and integrated nanoelectronic devices, where finding ways to enable efficient heat-dissipation can be critical. 2D materials, especially graphene and hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), are generally regarded as ideal materials for thermal management due to their high inherent thermal conductivity. In this paper, a new method is reported, which can be used to characterize thermal transport in 2D materials. The separation of pumping from detection can obtain the temperature at different distances from the heat source, which makes it possible to study the heat distribution of 2D materials. Using this method, the thermal conductivity of graphene and molybdenum disulfide is measured, and the thermal diffusion for different shapes of graphene is explored. It is found that thermal transport in graphene changes when the surrounding environment changes. In addition, thermal transport is restricted at the boundary. These processes are accurately simulated using the finite element method, and the simulated results agree well with the experiment. Furthermore, by depositing a layer of h-BN on graphene, the heat-dissipation characteristics of graphene become tunable. This study introduces and describes a new method to investigate and optimize thermal management in 2D materials.