Heat Conduction in Crystalline Silicon Films

The nature of heat transport in crystalline non-metallic solids is very different from that in their amorphous counterparts. This yields drastic differences in the magnitude and temperature dependence of the thermal conductivities of the two types of materials. The short mean free paths of heat carriers in amorphous materials permit the use of the heat diffusion equation to describe thermal phenomena at typical operating temperatures of microdevices. The validity of this approximation in crystalline silicon regions of compact semiconductor devices is the central question of this chapter.