Anisotropic thermal conductivity of nanoporous silica film

In this paper, thermal conductivity of porous silica film with porosity from 21 to 64 % was studied comprehensively. The corresponded dielectric constant is from 2.5 to 1.5. It is observed that the porous silica material has strong anisotropic characteristic. A serial-parallel hybrid model is proposed to explain the correlation between porosity and thermal conductivity in both in-plane and cross-plane components. The pores in the higher porosity silica film tend to distribute horizontally. This distribution of the pores in the dielectric film is the main factor that induces the anisotropic characteristic. The nonuniform distribution of pores also makes the conventional two-dimensional model of 36 method inappropriate for extracting the in-plane thermal conductivity. A new method based on the hybrid model was proposed to extract the in-plane thermal conductivity successfully. The anisotropic characteristic of the thermal conductivity may be accompanied by the anisotropic dielectric constant, which will greatly complicate the thermal management and resistance-capacitance delay simulation of the circuits and should be avoided. The proposed model would be helpful on evaluation of new porous low dielectric constant materials.