Role of the electron–phonon coupling in tuning the thermal boundary conductance at metal-dielectric interfaces by inserting ultrathin metal interlayers

Varying the thermal boundary conductance at metal-dielectric interfaces is of great importance for highly integrated electronic structures such as electronic, thermoelectric and plasmonic devices where heat dissipation is dominated by interfacial effects. In this paper we study the modification of the thermal boundary conductance at metal-dielectric interfaces by inserting metal interlayers of varying thickness below 10 nm. We show that the insertion of a tantalum interlayer at the Al/Si and Al/sapphire interfaces strongly hinders the phonon transmission across these boundaries, with a sharp transition and plateau within ∼1 nm. We show that the electron-phonon coupling has a major influence on the sharpness of the transition as the interlayer thickness is varied, and if the coupling is strong, the variation in thermal boundary conductance typically saturates within 2 nm. In contrast, the addition of a nickel interlayer at the Al/Si and the Al/sapphire interfaces produces a local minimum as the interlayer thickness increases, due to the similar phonon dispersion in Ni and Al. The weaker electron-phonon coupling in Ni causes the boundary conductance to saturate more slowly. Thermal property measurements were performed using time domain thermo-reflectance and are in good agreement with a formulation of the diffuse mismatch model based on real phonon dispersions that accounts for inelastic phonon scattering and phonon confinement within the interlayer. The analysis of the different assumptions included in the model reveals when inelastic processes should be considered. A hybrid model that introduces inelastic scattering only when the materials are more acoustically matched is found to better predict the thickness dependence of the thermal boundary conductance without any fitting parameters.