Research Assistantship Opening for Grad Student in Thermal Science of Nanoscale Electronics

Prof. David Cahill (MatSE, MRL, and affiliate appointments in Physics and MechSE) has an opening for a PhD graduate research assistant to work on experiments in the field of "nanoscale thermal transport", i. e., the generation and transport of heat in nanoscale electronic devices. In the short-term, the work will be part of a multi-PI project supported by DARPA on nanoelectronics to provide experimental validation of computational models being developed by collaborators at Georgia Tech. The long-term goal is to better understand the thermal management of microelectronic devices. The experiments will employ time-resolved pump-probe measurements on ps-to-ns time-scales with thermometry provided by magnetic thin films and the magneto-optic Kerr effect.

Prior work on this subject in the Cahill group includes:

• Anisotropic failure of Fourier theory in time-domain thermoreflectance experiments, Richard Wilson and David G. Cahill, Nat Commun 5, 5075 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms6075
• Thermal Conductivity of Oxide Tunnel Barriers in Magnetic Tunnel Junctions Measured by Ultrafast Thermoreflectance and Magneto-Optic Kerr Effect Thermometry, Hyejin Jang, Luca Marnitz, Torsten Huebner, Johannes Kimling, Timo Kuschel, and David G. Cahill, Phys. Rev. Applied 13, 024007 (2020)

David Cahill can be reached by email at d-cahill@illinois.edu or by phone at 217-333-6753.