Hot electron scattering at interfaces – Paper accepted into Journal of Heat Transfer (Congrats Ash Giri)!

Ash’s paper, “Influence of hot electron scattering and electron-phonon interactions on thermal boundary conductance at metal/non-metal interfaces,” has been accepted for publication into the Journal of Heat Transfer.  In this work, we present a coupled thermodynamic and quantum mechanical derivation of electron-phonon scattering at free electron metal/non-metal substrate interfaces.  A simplified approach to the Fermi’s Golden Rule with electron energy transitions between only three energy levels is adopted to derive an electron-phonon diffuse mismatch model, that account for the electron-phonon thermal boundary conductance at metal/insulator interfaces increases with electron temperature.  Our approach demonstrates that the metal-electron/non-metal phonon conductance at interfaces can be an order of magnitude larger than purely phonon driven processes when the electrons are driven out of equilibrium with the phonons, consistent with recent experimental observations.

This work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program.