A PEEK ON the lab
Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona
(UAB, Spain)
(UAB, Spain)
Contacts: Javier RODRIGUEZ VIEJO, javier.Rodriguez@uab.cat – Aitor LOPEANDIA FERNANDEZ, Aitor.Lopeandia@uab.cat – Elisabet RODA SALICHS, elisabet.roda@uab.cat
LAB and RESEARCH
One of GTNaM’s vacuum chambers to perform thermal conduction measurements.
Autonomous University of Barcelona, UAB, and the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, ICN2
Both are located in Bellaterra, near the city of Barcelona, Spain. The Group of Thermal Properties of Nanoscale Materials, GTNaM, works on thermal properties, heat capacity and thermal transport measurements of disordered and nanoscale materials, with special focus on the ultrathin film limit and low-dimensional solids.
The image shows one of GTNaM’s vacuum chambers to perform thermal conduction measurements. Refrigerated with a liquid thermal bath, the sample holder temperature can be controlled with in 1mK in the range from 240 to 400K. The inset shows the fast electrical plug-in of chips through gold contact probes.
Suspended structure consisting of two platforms (old design) that hang from the substrate through long insulating beams, between which the sample can be placed.
Suspended structure consisting of two platforms
The platforms are equipped with two heater/sensors that allow producing a temperature difference by Joule effect heat generation and measuring the temperature at both platforms from the resistance measurement.
The new system (see schematics) is built to minimize the influence of thermal contact resistance.
Measurements of thermal conductance with resolution around 1 nW/K are expected.
PEOPLE and LIFE
UAB-ICN2 team members
The group uses finite element modelling to computationally reproduce the experimental measurements of thermoelectric properties of low-conductance nanowires.
The microstructured devices are designed to minimize thermal conduction paths away from the sample and ensure low uncertainty in the measurement of thermal conductance.
UAB-ICN2 team members, Aitor Lopeandía, Javier Rodriguez-Viejo and Elisabet Roda (from left to right) in one of the measurement labs.
Elisabet working in the geometry optimization of multi-probe structures. These structures provide an experimental technique capable of eliminating the contact thermal resistance error from the measurement results of the sample conductance.