Thermal management of vertical gallium nitride nanowire arrays: Cooling design and tip temperature measurement

This study reports a new thermal management scheme for vertical Gallium Nitride (GaN) nanowire (NW) arrays. A new cooling design for vertical NWs is developed by encapsulating NWs with electroplated copper. Numerical simulations show that the thermal performance of NW array could be significantly enhanced when encapsulated with high thermal conductivity materials. We have also developed a tip temperature measurement technique to characterize the tip temperature of vertical GaN NWs by using steady-state photoluminescence (PL) system. The cooling design and tip temperature measurement technique can be applied to various NW-based nanoelectronic and nanophotonic applications.