It’s getting hot in there. As manufacturers pack more and more into smaller and smaller spaces, heat is becoming a bigger and bigger problem. Over broad ranges of fields, including information and communications, environment and energy, nanotechnology, materials, biotechnology and aerospace, ever increasing demands for high density and high integration are pushing heat ? and what to do with it, to new limits. To overcome these limits, makers must know the thermophysical properties of their products’ materials so they can design for optimal heat flow and dissipation.

Many of these products, for example, optical phase-change storage media, semiconductor ICs and flat panel displays, are built of many thin layers, each layer no thicker than several to several hundred nanometers. So knowing the thermophysicalal properties of these products requires knowing how heat flows and distributes inside the thin layers they contain. Knowing how heat flows and distributes requires accurate nanoscale measurements in both the thickness and lateral directions of these thin layers. To be usable in design, these measurements must be highly reliable and traceable to national and international standards.

To help manufactures design for and deal with nanoscale heat, PicoTherm Corporation provides thermal measurement solutions for nanoscale thin layers. PicoTherm develops, manufactures and sells instruments for measuring nanoscale thermophysical properties of thin films; in addition to providing contract measurement services.