Experimental investigation of size effect on thermal conductivity for ultra-thin amorphous poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) films

Abstract

An investigation was conducted to determine whether a “size effect” phenomenon for one particular thermophysical property, thermal conductivity, actually exists for amorphous poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) films with thicknesses ranging from 40 nm to 2 μm. This was done by using a non-contact, non-invasive, in-situ Transient Thermo-Reflectance (TTR) laser based technique. The results demonstrated that the intrinsic thermal conductivity of a 40 nm PMMA film deposited on native oxide of silicon increases by a factor of three over bulk PMMA values, and a distinct increase in the thermal conductivity of PMMA film was observed in ultra-thin (sub 100 nm) films. This confirmed the importance of film thickness for the through-plane thermal conductivity value of PMMA film on native oxide of silicon.