Breaking Tradition: How Complementary Methods Can Extend Thermal Conductivity Measurements into New Applications

Abstract

Measuring heat transfer rates and properties at short length scale is becoming increasingly important in fields like electronic packaging, nanotechnology, and quantum computing. Two obstacles confronting the thermal characterization of nanoscale materials include the development of new techniques to measure properties and reliable methods to confirm the validity of those measurements. This is especially important since standard reference materials are difficult or impossible to produce at nanoscales. Similar obstacles arise when attempting to measure properties in extreme environments, where standard thermophysical property measurement approaches cannot be used. This paper presents a case study on the thermophysical properties of spider dragline silk and how the use of a suite of measurement techniques that complement each other can bound the uncertainty of the measured property. This complementary approach to validating novel techniques will increase the confidence in measured properties and will open new avenues of thermal science applications.