Measurement of the Intrinsic Thermal Conductivity of Individual Silicon Nanoribbons

One-dimensional semiconductor nanowires, which show strong size dependent properties, have attracted significant attention during the past decade. The small characteristic size and unique physical properties can lead to broad applications such as nanoelectronics, photonics, and energy conversion. As the most widely used semiconductor material, silicon nanostructures (e.g. Si nanowires/nanoribbons) have drawn a lot of interest. Significant amount of efforts have been taken to understand their thermal properties. Experimentally, there have been a few reports on the thermal conductivity (κ) of individual 1D silicon nanostructures. Li et al. [1] first acquired the thermal conductivity of individual Si nanowires of different diameters. Later, the thermal conductivity of thin Si nanowires [2] and rough Si nanowires [3] has been measured using the same techniques. However, in these studies, the measured thermal conductivity is an effective one, which includes the effects of the contact thermal resistance between the Si nanowire and the heat source/sink. These effects will lead to some uncertainties in the experimental data.