Now Seen at the Atomic Scale: Visualizing Phonon-Mediated Heat Transport Across Materials

Atomic-level visualization of phonon transport

A new breakthrough from the International Center for Quantum Materials at Peking University has opened a window into one of the most elusive processes in materials science: phonon-mediated heat transport across atomic interfaces. For the first time, scientists have visualized this phenomenon directly at the nanoscale, providing critical insight into how heat flows — or fails to flow — across material boundaries in modern electronic devices.

Why Phonons Matter in Materials Science

Phonons — quantized vibrations of atoms in a crystal lattice — are the primary carriers of heat in semiconductors and insulators. At the junctions between different materials, these phonons often scatter or mismatch, generating thermal resistance that limits device efficiency. As transistors shrink and power densities rise, managing this interfacial thermal resistance becomes mission-critical for chip performance and reliability.

Until now, researchers lacked the ability to map this behavior with sufficient spatial resolution. Existing techniques could not capture sub-nanometer temperature changes, particularly across buried interfaces like those found in heterojunctions or nanostructures. This research changes that.

Atomic-Scale Heat Maps: A Microscopy Milestone

Led by Gao Peng and his team, the study used electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) combined with environmental transmission electron microscopy (E-TEM) to observe interfacial phonon transport with unprecedented detail. The group designed a custom-built heating device to apply a controlled temperature gradient across an AlN/SiC (aluminum nitride/silicon carbide) interface.

Under a temperature gradient of 180 K/μm, the team recorded a temperature jump of up to 20 K across just 2 nanometers — revealing that thermal resistance at the interface is 30–70× greater than in the bulk material. These measurements represent the most precise atomic-scale interface temperature mapping ever reported.

Beyond Static Observations: Tracking Nonequilibrium Phonons

Interestingly, the researchers also discovered nonequilibrium phonon populations near the interface — behaviors that deviate from standard Bose-Einstein thermal distributions. By analyzing how these distributions change under forward and reverse heat flow, the team gained new insight into asymmetric inelastic phonon interactions — a finding with significant implications for phononic engineering and heat rectification technologies.

These findings could directly inform the design of thermal interfaces in high-power electronics, including gallium nitride (GaN)-based devices, quantum chips, and advanced photonic systems. As materials science continues to push toward atomic-scale control, tools like these offer a roadmap for reducing heat bottlenecks that impair miniaturized circuits.

The Road Ahead: Atomic-Scale Thermal Design

This research is more than a technical milestone — it signals a paradigm shift in how we understand and engineer thermal transport. As Nature’s editorial team remarked, “This paper goes beyond simply measuring temperature at the nanoscale. It opens the door to a fundamentally new view of how energy flows across materials.”

🔗 Original article from Phys.org: https://phys.org/news/2025-06-phonon-materials-visualized-atomic.html

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