Engineering Interfaces at the Nanoscale

From heat dissipation in electronic devices to the heating of our homes, thermal transport is ubiquitous in today’s technology. In the past few decades, a drive to miniaturize devices, in some cases to length scales smaller than the intrinsic mean free paths of the energy carriers, while concurrently increasing efficiency, has pushed thermal management to a primary consideration in the design and implementation of technological devices. Solid-solid interfaces serve as primary scattering sites for thermal carriers and can contribute significantly to the overall thermal resistance of the device. Controlling the interfacial resistance remains a top priority for thermal engineers, but this requires an understanding of the fundamental physics behind thermal carriers and mechanisms which can influence interfacial transport.