Our paper,  “Reduction in thermal boundary conductance due to proton implantation in silicon and sapphire,”  was recently published in Applied Physics Letters (Applied Physics Letters 98, 231901 (2011)).  In this work, we show that by irradiating bulk sapphire and silicon with protons, we can reduce the thermal boundary conductance between Al/Si and Al/sapphire by an order of magnitude.

We are excited to welcome Ramez Cheaito to the Lab, and to UVA!  Ramez received his B.S in Physics from the Faculty of Sciences in the Lebanese University in 2008. He then worked for two years as a research assistant in Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi, UAE.   Ramez is an expert in ultrafast thermoreflectance techniques.

Congratulations to Dr. John C. Duda, who successfully defended his Ph.D. work under the advising of Prof. Pam Norris.  John will begin a postdoc with my group to examine role of electron-phonon scattering in nanostructured metals and interfaces.

I will be traveling back to UVA from 5/2 – 5/13 for John Duda’s dissertation defense and to begin setting up my experiments.