Hierarchical multi-scale thermal transport from nano to macro scales

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State of the art IT devices, such as semiconductor electronics, optoelectronics and data storage media, include components with dimensions in the nanometres, and are subject to intense and very brief heating pulses of picoseconds. Further advances in data storage densities, transistor and transmission speeds are strongly limited by issues related to heat transfer. These issues have only recently emerged as a consequence of increased densities and miniaturization of the device features into the nanometres. In the presence of hotspots and in thin metallic media, and in the nanoscale regime, the continuum Fourier assumption fails and the contributions of both phonons and electrons to heat transfer can no longer be neglected. To predict the thermal behaviour at all relevant scales, one needs to take into account device components with spatial dimensions from nanometres to centimetres and temporal scales from picoseconds to hours.