Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2020) 135: 109
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-020-00180-7

Regular Article

Interfacial heat transport across multilayer nanofilms in ballistic–diffusive regime

¹ Department of Physics, College of Science Alzulfi, Majmaah University, Al Majmaah, 11952, Saudi Arabia
² Laboratory of Electronics and Microelectronics, University of Monastir, 5019, Monastir, Tunisia
³ Laboratory of Thermal Processes, Research and Technology Centre of Energy, P.B N°95, 2050, Hammam Lif, Tunisia
⁴ University of Tunis El Manar, University Campus in Tunis, 2092, Manar II Tunis, Tunisia

^* e-mail: Ha.Belmabrouk@mu.edu.sa
^** e-mail: houssem.rezgui@fst.utm.tn

Received: 12 June 2019
Accepted: 28 October 2019
Published online: 23 January 2020

Abstract

In recent years, investigations of nanoscale heat transfer have been regarded as a critical challenge for thermal engineering applications. Therefore, improving the thermal conduction inside nanodevices is required to ensure the reliability of future-generation nanoelectronics. Owing to the fast improvement in the semiconductor industry, researchers have been strongly motivated to study interfacial phonon transport to reduce the self-heating mechanism caused by ballistic thermal conduction, which induces size-dependent effective thermal conductivity. Based on the phonon Boltzmann equation (BTE), we obtain the ballistic–diffusive equation and Cattaneo–Vernotte models to explain the heat conduction in multiple interfaces of silicon and silicon dioxide nanolayers. Both the temperature-jump boundary condition and thermal boundary resistance, also referred to as Kapitza resistance, can control the interfacial heat transport in the ballistic–diffusive regime. In the present study, our analytical models are compared with the phonon BTE to validate the performance of our methodology. We find that if the thermal boundary resistance reduces, the heat transport across the interfaces can be enhanced, which is necessary to limit the heat dissipation in silicon nanolayers.