Phonon hydrodynamics is an exotic phonon transport phenomenon that challenges the conventional understanding of diffusive phonon scattering in crystalline solids. It features a peculiar collective motion of phonons with various unconventional properties resembling fluid hydrodynamics, facilitating non Fourier heat transport. Hence, it opens up several new avenues to enrich the knowledge and implementations on phonon physics, phonon engineering, and micro and nanoelectronic device technologies. This review aims at covering a comprehensive development as well as the recent advancements in this field via experiments, analytical methods, and state-of-the-art numerical techniques. The evolution of the topic has been realized using both phenomenological and material science perspectives. Further, the discussions related to the factors that influence such peculiar motion, illustrate the capability of phonon hydrodynamics to be implemented in various applications. A plethora of new ideas can emerge from the topic considering both the physics and the material science axes, navigating toward a promising outlook in the research areas around phonon transport in non-metallic solids.

Thermal properties of metal matrix composite materials are becoming ever more relevant with the increasing demand for thermally efficient materials. In this work, the thermal conductivity and heat transfers at the interfaces of copper matrix composite materials reinforced with diamond particles (Cu/D) are discussed. The composite materials contain either ZrC or TiC interphases and exhibit, respectively, higher and lower thermal conductivities with respect to their pure Cu/D counterparts. These thermal conductivities are accounted to the presence of strong covalent bonds and increased relative densities. The role of these interphases is also discussed regarding the phonon transmission at the interfaces.

In this paper, the problem of the quantitative characterization of thermal resistance fields in a multilayer sample is addressed by using the classical front face flash method as the thermal excitation and infrared thermography (IRT) as the monitoring sensor. In this challenging problem, the complete inverse processing of a multilayer analytical model is difficult due to the lack of sensitivity of some parameters (layer thickness, depth of thermal resistance, etc.) and the expansive computational iterative processing. For these reasons, the proposed strategy is to use a simple multilayer problem where only one resistive layer is estimated. Moreover, to simplify the inverse processing often based on iterative methods, an asymptotic development method is proposed here. Regarding the thermal signal reconstruction (TSR) methods, the drawback of these methods is the inability to be quantitative. To overcome this problem, the method incorporates a calibration process originating from the complete analytical quadrupole solution to the thermal problem. This analytical knowledge allows self-calibration of the asymptotic method. From this calibration, the quantitative thermal resistance field of a sample can be retrieved with a reasonable accuracy lower than 5%.

This paper investigates the self-heating effect in SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors. A physical study leads to a nonlinear physical model describing static and dynamic self-heating mechanism. The implementation of this model using an electrical equivalent circuit is presented. Our approach is validated using measurements on devices from different technologies. System configuration, measurement, and calibration issues are presented.

This article presents three photothermal methods dedicated to the measurement of the thermal properties of chalcogenide alloys, used as a central element in the new generations of non-volatile memory. These materials have two phases, amorphous and crystalline, possessing a sharp contrast in their electrical and thermal properties. In the crystalline phase, the properties also change very significantly with temperature. The control of the temperature of the samples, the choice of transducers, and the time or frequency characteristic values of the photothermal excitation are thoroughly discussed. Each photothermal technique is described from the experimental point of view as well as from the inverse method, performed to identify the parameters of interest. The identified thermal properties mainly concern the thermal conductivity and the thermal resistance at the interfaces between the phase-change materials and the materials in contact as encountered in the production of the microelectronic memory device. Assessing various photothermal techniques, the study suggests that pulsed photothermal radiometry is the most effective method for sensitive high-temperature measurements of thermal properties of the phase-change materials.

In the domain of phase change memories (PCMs), intensive research is conducted to reduce the programming cycle cost. The RESET operation is done by melting the PCM and then quenching the liquid phase to put it back to the amorphous state. In most of the devices, the heating is realized by the Joule effect with a titanium nitride (TiN) component put in contact with the PCM itself. One of the crucial points to improve the efficiency of this technology is to characterize the thermal contact between TiN and PCM. Having a low thermal resistance between the heater and the PCM ensures the heat transfer between the two is as efficient as possible. In this work, the interfacial thermal resistance between Ge-doped G2Sb2Te5 (GeGST)/TiN in multilayer systems has been characterized, and the influence of the compressive stress exerted by the TiN layers on the GeGST crystallization has been highlighted.